Craig A. Kelly was appointed senior director of international government relations at Exxon Mobil Corporation in November 2012. He is based in Washington, D.C.

Kelly is a former career U.S. diplomat who spent 26 years in Foreign Service. He held a variety of posts in Europe and Latin America and was U.S. ambassador to Chile from 2004-2007.

From 2001-2004, Ambassador Kelly served as executive assistant to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and traveled to more than 90 countries in that capacity. He later served as principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, overseeing U.S. policy and operations in 35 countries and troubleshooting regional crises such as the 2009 coup in Honduras. In 2010, he was the senior-most U.S. official to travel to Havana, Cuba, in 15 years.

Kelly also held positions in Rome, Paris and Bogota’, and covered Western European affairs at the National Security Council.

After leaving the State Department, he ran the Latin America practice at the Cohen Group, a Washington D.C.-based international consulting firm, from 2010 to 2012.

Kelly received a bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and a Ph.D. in romance languages and history from the University of California, Los Angeles. He also studied at Stanford University and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) in Paris. He was a Fulbright scholar in Italy.He speaks fluent Spanish, French, Italian, and intermediate Portuguese.