Specialty: Managing long-term communications campaigns; managing speechwriting and other executive communications relationships.

Fields most served: National defense with a primary focus on building support for major weapons systems within the defense-intellectual, journalistic, technology and policy communities; energy.

Quote: "The most satisfying thing about my work is the ability to range across several issue areas, to combine knowledge and ideas from a number of different experiences and disciplines to come up with novel ideas and angles for our clients to pursue, and to use this same knowledge and experience to fine tune, quality control, and refine the output of our writers to hit the mark for our clients."

Bio:   G. Philip Hughes draws on a wealth of high-level foreign policy experience in developing and managing message campaigns for international companies.

A former vice president of Washington-based Manchester Trade, Ltd., Ambassador Hughes has served in many senior foreign policy posts in the White House and Department of State, Commerce and Defense. As U.S. Ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean from 1990 to 1993, he oversaw a staff of 250 dealing with more than a dozen Caribbean states.

For almost five years he held the position of Deputy National Security Affairs Advisor to Vice President George Bush. He served two tours of duty on the National Security Council staff during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George Bush as Director for Latin American Affairs and, later, as the Executive Secretary of the Council. In the later capacity, he served as chief-of-staff, directing the work of seventy staff members supporting the National Security Advisor.

Ambassador Hughes has also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs, where he negotiated more than a half-dozen bilateral and multilateral agreements. He also served as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement.

At Manchester Trade, he advised business associations and corporate clients on trade and international business issues. His other private-sector roles have included Executive Director of the National Council of World Affairs Organizations, and Managing Director of the Council of the Americas.

Mr. Hughes is a graduate of the University of Dayton and holds graduate degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Harvard University. He is currently a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, and Secretary of the Council of American Ambassadors.

Mr. Hughes is fluent in Spanish and French. He and his wife, Victoria, live in Falls Church, Virginia.