Richard Haass is President of the Council on Foreign Relations, a position he has held since July 2003. The Council, based in New York with an office in Washington, DC, is an independent, national membership organization and a nonpartisan center for scholars dedicated to producing and disseminating ideas so that individual and corporate members, as well as policymakers, journalists, students, and interested citizens in the United States and other countries, can better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other governments.

Haass is the author or editor of eleven books on American foreign policy. His most recent book is The Opportunity (Public Affairs, May 2005). He is also the author of one book on management: The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur: How to Be Effective in Any Unruly Organization.

Until June 2003, Richard Haass was Director of Policy Planning for the Department of State, where he was a principal advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell on a broad range of foreign policy concerns. Confirmed by the U.S. Senate to hold the rank of ambassador, Haass served as U.S. Coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan and was the lead U.S. Government official in support of the Northern Ireland peace process. For his efforts, he received the State Department's Distinguished Honor Award.

Ambassador Haass has extensive additional government experience. From 1989-1993, he was Special Assistant to President George Bush and Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. In 1991, Haass was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for his contributions to the development and articulation of U.S. policy during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Previously, he served in various posts in the Departments of State (1981-85) and Defense (1979-80) and was a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate.

Haass also has been Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution, the Sol M. Linowitz Visiting Professor of International Studies at Hamilton College, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. A Rhodes Scholar, Haass holds a B.A. from Oberlin College and both the Master and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Oxford University.

Richard Haass was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.