Donald S. Hays
Chief Operating Officer
Ambassador Donald S. Hays joined the staff of Business Executives for National Security as chief operating officer on August 21, 2006. Prior to joining BENS he served for 33 years as a Foreign Service officer at postings around the world.
In his most recent assignment, he was senior diplomat in residence at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. working to develop and sustain the multi-party efforts to create needed constitutional and confidence building measures in Bosnia-Herzegovina. While at USIP he also served on experts group in support of the Iraq Study Group. The four years immediately prior to this, he served as the Principal Deputy High Representative and Chief of Staff to the High Representative in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this position he acted as the senior coordinator for economic matters with the Bosnian Government and managed collaborative efforts with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Commission and other assistance organizations on all matters pertaining to the economy and state building efforts.
In November 1999 he was appointed by the President to serve as United States Ambassador for UN Management Reform, a post he held until June 2001. During that assignment the US was successful in leading reform within the UN that allowed the US to pay a significant amount of arrears to the UN and strengthen the UN’s ability to carry out Peace Keeping efforts.
Immediately prior to this posting he was director of management policy and planning at the State Department, where he developed a department-wide process that matched program activities to budgetary planning. He also served as executive secretary for a commission to review the functions, structure and size of the U.S. diplomatic presence overseas. During that period he also established the process for building new, more secure Embassies in the wake of bombings in east Africa. For the three years immediately preceding this assignment he managed the Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs, helping to manage the Balkans crises and focusing on expanding US representation to Russia, the former Soviet Republics and those Countries in Central and south Central Europe.
His earlier Foreign Service assignments included positions in Bonn and Berlin, Germany; Islamabad, Pakistan; Dakar, Senegal; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Leningrad, USSR; and Saigon, Vietnam. Prior to entering the Foreign Service he served in the military from 1967-70, with service in Vietnam from 1968 until February 1970, with the 101st Airborne Division and the 5th Infantry Division in Vietnam.
Honors – Military - he received two Bronze Stars, the Air Medal and the Army commendation medal for his military service in Vietnam. During his more than thirty years in the Department of State he was awarded the President’s Distinguished Service Award, two Department of State Distinguished Honor Awards and four Superior Honor Awards. He authored a report on the Bosnia Constitutional Process 2006.
He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, Georgetown University and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Graduating with high honors from University of California.
Ambassador Hays and his wife, Ellen, have been married for 40 years.
