William McPherson is retired from the State Department after 21 years service in environmental diplomacy. His Ph.D. in sociology is from Harvard University. His assignments in Tokyo, Geneva and Washington involved work with Japanese and international environmental organizations, particularly UN Environment Program agencies such as CITES, Basel, Chemicals and the Montreal Protocol. Also in Geneva, he worked with the World Meteorological Organization and the secretariat of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Before entering the State Department, he taught sociology at several colleges and universities.