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William Hill

U.S. Department of State

Ambassador William Hill returned this summer after completing his second term, from January 2003 to July 2006, as Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, where he was charged with negotiation of a political settlement to the Transdniestrian conflict and facilitation of the withdrawal of Russian forces, arms, and ammunition from Moldova. He was a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC from November 2001 to September 2002, after his first tour as OSCE Head of Mission in Moldova. A career foreign service officer, he has served in Moscow, Leningrad, Belgrade, the U.S. CSCE delegation in Vienna, and Dhaka. In Washington, DC, he has held a number of posts involving east-west relations, political-military affairs, and intelligence analysis, including CSCE Coordinator and Chief of Analysis for Eastern Europe in the State Department, European Division Chief in the Voice of America, and Senior Advisor for Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon.

Prior to joining the foreign service, Ambassador Hill held teaching and research posts at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Virginia Tech, and the Harvard Russian Research Center. He holds a PhD in Russian history and Soviet politics from the University of California at Berkeley, and studied at Leningrad State University and Moscow State University as a participant in the U.S.-Soviet academic exchange. His languages include Russian, Serbian, Croatian, German, Romanian, and French.