Amb. William Ramsay has pursued a long and renowned career in resource economics and geopolitics. He has worked for several decades as an American diplomat and senior State Department official. During the period 1970-1998 his foreign postings for the United States Department of State included: Kinshasa, Congo; Brussels, the European Union; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, and finally as Ambassador Plenipotentiary in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo. Amb. Ramsay was also Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in Washington DC for a period of six years, responsible for energy, strategic commodities, agricultural trade policy, as well as economic and foreign policy sanctions.
Amb. Ramsay presently teaches an academic course entitled "The Diplomacy of Energy" at Sciences-Po in Paris. Prior to his current lecturing activity, he was Director of the Energy Centre at the French Institute for International Relations (Ifri). He was Deputy Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris for 10 years prior to the Directorship at Ifri. Amb. Ramsay has an MBA from Michigan State University and a Masters in Commodity Economics and Trade from the Leland Stanford University in California. He is Commandeur of the Congolese Ordre de Merite and Chevalier of the French Legion d'Honneur.