Alexander F. Watson is a retired Foreign Service officer who subsequently worked for The Nature Conservancy and Hills & Company, an international consulting firm in Washington, DC. For over thirty years, Ambassador Watson was a career Foreign Service officer, serving in his final assignment as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs from 1993 to 1996. Just prior to that he served as U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations with the rank of ambassador, ambassador to Peru, deputy chief of mission in the American embassies in Brasilia, Bogota, and La Paz. Among previous assignments, he served as the director of the Office of Development Finance in the Department of State. After retiring from the Foreign Service in 1996, Ambassador Watson joined The Nature Conservancy as vice president and director for Latin America and the Caribbean and subsequently vice president and executive director for the organization’s overall international conservation program. He has continued his affiliation with TNC on a voluntary basis as trustee for Maryland/DC chapter and then the Argentina program. In 2002 Ambassador Watson joined Hills & Company as managing director, retiring in 2019. Ambassador Watson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Diplomacy, the American Foreign Service Association, and the Inter-American Dialogue. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Wisconsin. Ambassador Watson serves on the Advisory Councils of the Inter-American Foundation and the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Alec Co-Chairs the Laspau Advisory Council with Muni Figueres and Bill Richardson. He joined the Board of Trustees in 2012.