Ford Hart helped administer U.S. China policy at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, and in Greater China over a 33-year diplomatic career. His final posting was as Chief of Mission at the U.S. Consulate General to Hong Kong and Macau. Ford now advises companies and institutions on Indo-Pacific geopolitics and contributes to the public debate on the region. Ford was Special Envoy for the Six-Party Talks, for which President Obama accorded him the personal rank of ambassador. He also was NSC Director for China and Taiwan under President George W. Bush. At the Pentagon, Ford was foreign policy advisor (POLAD) to the Chief of Naval Operations. Ford is Senior Advisor to Bower Group Asia, a government relations consultancy. He sits on the advisory boards of the American Association of the Indo-Pacific and the European Cyber Diplomacy project. Ford hosts in-house podcasts on Asian geopolitics for a private equity firm. He is a regular speaker on foreign policy, including at events hosted by Goldman Sachs, Axiom Asia, Citibank, and Forsyth Barr. In addition to four postings in China, Ford served overseas in the USSR and Iraq. At the State Department, he also worked on Asian regional policy, the Taiwan Strait, Kazakhstan, crisis management, and post-conflict stabilization.