Ambassador J. Stapleton (Stape) Roy is Founding Director Emeritus of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC and a Wilson Center Distinguished Scholar. He served as Director of the Kissinger Institute from September 2008 until August 2013 and continues to be a Senior Advisor to the Institute.

Stape Roy was born in China, where his parents were educational missionaries, spending much of his youth there during the upheavals of World War II and the communist revolution. He joined the US Foreign Service immediately after graduating from Princeton in 1956, retiring 45 years later with the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the service. In 1978 he participated in the secret negotiations that led to the establishment of US-PRC diplomatic relations. During a career focused on East Asia and the Soviet Union, his ambassadorial assignments included Singapore, the People’s Republic of China, and Indonesia. His final post with the State Department was as Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research.

Following his retirement from the State Department in 2001, Ambassador Roy joined Kissinger Associates, Inc., a strategic consulting firm, becoming Vice-Chairman in 2006. In September 2008, he moved to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to head the newly created Kissinger Institute, while continuing as a Senior Adviser to Kissinger Associates. In 2001 he received Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Award for Distinguished Public Service.