Henry Haggard
February 10, 2025
Topic: Korea
Henry Haggard is the founding partner of Seekonk LLC. Following a twenty-five year career at the U.S. State Department during which he attained the rank of Counselor in the Senior Foreign Service, Henry is a Senior Advisor at WestExec, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Baker Institute, Rice University, Senior Associate of the KF-VUB Korea Chair at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) and U.S. Senior Advisor at AMCHAM Korea. From 2021-2023, he served as Minister Counsellor for Political Affairs at the United States Embassy in South Korea. Prior to that, he served as Director at the National Security Council under both the Trump and Biden administrations, coordinating United States policy and engagement with Turkey, Greece, and the United Kingdom.
Previous assignments at the State Department include Director of Energy Diplomacy for Asia and the Middle East, Acting Political Minister Counsellor at the United States Mission to the European Union, Chief of Staff to the Secretary’s Special Representative for Syria Engagement, Deputy Principal Officer in Erbil, Iraq, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, three tours in the State Department’s Executive Secretariat for Secretaries Powell, Rice and Kerry, a tour in Baghdad, and one stint as political-military team lead at the United States Embassy in Paris.
Henry speaks fluent Korean and French and received a BA in International Relations from Brown University and a Masters of Strategic Studies from the US Army War College. He is the founder of The 25 Year Apprenticeship, a resource for diplomatic tradecraft. Henry is a frequent contributor to news broadcasts and other media outlets covering the Korean peninsula and global affairs. He is the proud father of three children, Hugo, Bruno and Esmé.