Chase Untermeyer

Biographical Information

"Chase Untermeyer has been an international business consultant since returning in 2007 from Qatar, where he served three years as United States ambassador on appointment of President George W. Bush...

"In 1977-78, he collaborated with George Bush on memoirs of his public life. The work was never published, but parts of it were used in Bush’s subsequent book, Looking Forward (1987) with Victor Gold. In connection with this project, he accompanied Mr and Mrs Bush on their return trip to China in the fall of l977 in a delegation that included the future US secretary of State, James A. Baker III; the future US ambassador to China, James R. Lilley; political journalist David Broder of the Washington Post; and the renowned author and broadcast journalist Lowell Thomas...

"In 1983 he was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Installations and Facilities, in charge of the bases and other land and buildings of the Navy and Marine Corps. The next year; President Reagan appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, with responsibility for recruiting, training, health, housing, discipline, and other personnel aspects of 600,000 Navy and 200,000 Marine Corps men and women, plus one-third million civilian employees.

"Mr Untermeyer resigned his position at the Navy Department to spend the 1988 presidential campaign planning the transition in the event Vice President Bush was elected. The morning after his election, Mr Bush named Mr Untermeyer as director of presidential personnel, to advise him on some 3500 federal appointments. He continued in this role as an Assistant to the President in the White House through August 1991, when he became director of the Voice of America, the overseas broadcasting arm of the U.S. Government. In addition, he oversaw Worldnet, a 24-hour/day television service, and Radio and TV Martí, which broadcast entirely to Cuba.

Upon the conclusion of his government service on 20 January 1993, Mr Untermeyer was appointed by the first President Bush to a three-year term on the Board of Visitors of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, serving the final year as chairman. He has also served as president of the Houston READ Commission, the city’s coalition for literacy; as a member of the board of National Public Radio; as a member of the Defense Health Board; as a member of the advisory council of the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico (Fideicomiso de Conservación de Puerto Rico); and as a member of the Houston Port Commission, which oversees the public wharves and facilities of the second-largest port in the United States and the eighth-largest in the world. He is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"In January 1999, Mr Untermeyer was appointed chairman of the Texas State Board of Education by then-Governor George W. Bush and served as chairman through the end of the Bush governorship. The Board has sole constitutional authority over the Texas Permanent School Fund, a public fund then valued at $22 billion. Having been elected in 2000 without opposition to a full term with over 330,000 votes, he remained a member of the Board until the completion of this term in January 2003....

"Between leaving Washington in 1993 and going to Qatar in 2004, Mr Untermeyer made a number of overseas missions: To Germany (1993) for meetings of the board of the RIAS Berlin Commission; to Mongolia (1996) on a mission of the International Republican Institute to help the new noncommunist government in its transition to power; to Taiwan and Hong Kong (1998), Turkey (1998), and Singapore (1999) on delegations of the World Affairs Councils of America; to Israel and Jordan (1999) on a delegation of Texas Republican officials sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston; to Japan (2001) as a member of the Asia Society’s National Commission on Asia in the Schools; to Cuba (2002) with the Houston World Affairs Council; to Cambodia (2003) for the International Republican Institute to do an assessment of the political situation prior to parliamentary elections; to the Vatican (2004) for the ordination of Archbishop Michael Miller; to Taiwan (2004) on the invitation of its government to observe the presidential campaign there; and to Israel (2009) with the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA) for meetings on regional security.

"Ambassador Untermeyer is married to the former Diana Cumming Kendrick of Sheridan, Wyoming. They met in the White House the first week of the Bush Administration when she was executive assistant to Boyden Gray, counsel to President Bush. They have a daughter, Ellyson, born in Houston in September 1993."