Ambassador John T. Hennessey-Niland is the former U.S. ambassador to Palau. With a 35-year career in the Foreign Service, he is one of the most experienced “Pacific hands” to serve in the Department of State. He has held multiple posts in the Indo-Pacific, including Fiji, Australia, and Hawaii, where he served as the foreign policy advisor (POLAD) to the commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific. His other assignments include serving on the National Security Council as a director responsible for international summits, as a United Nations war crimes investigator in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and at several embassies in Europe, including Paris (twice), Dublin, and The Hague.
Hennessey-Niland is currently a senior fellow at the National Defense University Joint Staff College and a distinguished professor of practice and director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
