Ambassador Jenonne Walker

Jenonne Walker was the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 1995 to 1998.   Immediately prior to that, she was Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton and Senior Director for Europe, the President’s key advisor on U.S. relations with Europe, on the National Security Council Staff. After retiring from government she spent two years as Vice President for Europe of the World Monuments Fund, identifying historically and culturally important sites in need of conservation and forging partnerships for their restoration with European governments, foundations, and corporations.

Earlier in her government career, Ms. Walker worked as an analyst of West European affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency, was a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State, served as Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Sweden, was Director of the Office of European and United Nations Arms Control at the Department of State, and was Chair of various interagency committees shaping U.S. policy on arms control negotiations. For her work on arms control she received from President Ronald Reagan the Distinguished Civil Service Award.

During a period out of government, Ambassador Walker she was a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and subsequently a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars where she wrote extensively on U.S.-European relations and international security issues. She received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to research the role of European and trans-Atlantic organizations in easing ethnic and other tensions within states.

Ambassador Walker is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the boards of directors of The German Marshall Fund of the U.S., the Project on Ethnic Relations, Friends of Czech Greenways, the American Friends of the Czech Republic, and the Washington Concert Opera.

Ms. Walker received a B.A. in Letters and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Oklahoma and did further graduate study in contemporary literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of London.