Past Speaker

R. James Woolsey served under four U.S. Presidential administrations, including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Ambassador Woolsey is a frequent news media contributor on issues of national and international security, alternative fuel options for transportation, energy, foreign affairs, defense, and intelligence.

He served as Under Secretary of the Navy and General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services and was also appointed by President Reagan as Delegate at Large to the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and Nuclear and Space Arms Talks (NST).  As a former U.S .Army officer, he was an adviser to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I).

Ambassador Woolsey currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a Congressional Advisory Board.  Previously, he served on the National Commission on Energy Policy; was Executive Committee Chairman of the Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents, and a trustee of Stanford University.

Ambassador Woolsey has served as a member of boards of directors of publicly and privately held companies related to technology and security, including Martin Marietta; British Aerospace, Inc; Fairchild Industries; and Yurie Systems, Inc. In 2009, he was the Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and in 2010-2012 he was a Senior Fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.

R. James Woolsey was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and attended Tulsa public schools, graduating from Tulsa Central High School. He received his BA degree from Stanford University, Phi Beta Kappa), an MA from Oxford University, Rhodes Scholar and an LLB from Yale Law School and was Managing Editor of the Yale Law Journal.