Jacques Pitteloud was appointed as Ambassador of Switzerland to the United States of America in 2019. Ambassador Pitteloud was born on November 12th, 1962, in Zurich, Switzerland. He joined the Swiss Foreign Service in 1987, being first assigned as an Advisor to the Foreign Minister. From 1988 to 1989, he served as a trade attaché at the Swiss Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. From 1990-1995, he served in the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service. Following his service there, he acted as a personal advisor (General Staff matters and Intelligence) to two successive Defence Ministers until 1999. In 1999-2000, he served as the Head of a Study Group tasked to develop the future structures of the Swiss Armed Forces.

After having been a witness of the Rwanda Genocide in 1994, Dr Pitteloud created an organization dedicated to the task of hunting down and bringing to justice the perpetrators and he managed to have several of them prosecuted both by the international as well as by domestic courts. Dr Pitteloud then served as the first Intelligence Coordinator for the Swiss Government from 2000 to 2005: this function entailed drafting intelligence requirements for the executive, overseeing the drafting of strategic assessments on security-relevant topics, coordinating the work of the various intelligence services as well as of law enforcement and analysis agencies. He then became the Director, Arms Control, Disarmament, Security Policy and Intelligence at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bern. For the duration of his tenure, Ambassador Pitteloud also headed the Swiss Delegation to the Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

From 2010 to 2015, Jacques Pitteloud was Swiss Ambassador to Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and the Seychelles. He was instrumental in initiating and supporting various civil society initiatives as well as conservation programmes. Dr Pitteloud was also involved in a series of mediations in the region.

Jacques Pitteloud was Director General of the Swiss FDFA from September 2015 prior to being appointed as Swiss Ambassador to the United States in September 2019. As a Director General, he oversaw a budget of USD 3 Billion and was responsible for Human Resources of a 5400-FTE Organization. His tasks also entailed running IT and communications for the whole Ministry, as well as heading the legal and translation services. The Director General was also responsible for the management of all FDFA buildings both in Switzerland and abroad.

Dr Pitteloud earned a Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. from the Law School at the University of Zürich (Master 1986, PhD 1987). Following his assignment in the Middle East, he graduated from the International Training Course in Security Policy (ITC) at Geneva University. He is a retired lieutenant colonel (General Staff) in the Swiss Armed Forces and was the commander of a Mechanized Infantry Battalion. A passionate bird photographer, Jacques Pitteloud has published his pictures in several books and publications in Kenya and South Africa.

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In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from September 15 through October 15, Monica Smith, our Club Historian shares the story of NASA astronaut, engineer, inventor, author, and Tierra Lunacvineyard owner José M. Hernández. You may have heard of him recently thanks to a movie that just debuted starring Michael Peña as Hernández. “A Million Miles Away” is based on the true story of Hernández’s ascent from itinerant farmhand to NASA Astronaut.

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Fanny Yayi Bondje is a Cameroonian-American with a passion and strong belief of working from the ground up in the development and humanitarian sector, while using a critical lens to acknowledge and challenge the foundation and hierarchies of such sectors. She is a firm believer of focusing on the impact over the intention of her work as she strives to “get it right, not to be right”.

Ms. Yayi Bondje holds a master’s degree in humanitarianism, aid, and conflict from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) and a BA in politics, human rights, and development from New York University. With copious amounts of travel and work experiences spanning across five continents, Fanny appreciates being uncomfortable and humbled as she adapts to numerous environments that fosters her broadening global perspective.

Ms. Yayi Bondje is an early career professional with experience working in youth support and development, refugee assistance, and community health systems in South America and West Africa. She is currently a program associate on the Evaluation and Adaptive Learning team at Results for Development (R4D). At R4D, She is working to co-create and co-design development solutions that innovate on traditional monitoring and evaluation approaches, in order to support governance and accountability mechanisms for local community health systems in Mali and Côte d’Ivoire.

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