Ronald P. Spogli is the former United States Ambassador to Italy

United States Ambassador to Italy

Since 1840, the United States has had diplomatic representation in the Italian Republic and its predecessor nation, the Kingdom of Italy, with a break in relations from 1941 to 1944 while Italy and the U.S. were at war during World War II. The U.S. Mission to Italy is headed by the Embassy of the...

 and to San Marino

United States Ambassador to San Marino

The United States Ambassador to San Marino is the official representative of the government of the United States to the government of San Marino. The ambassador is concurrently the ambassador to Italy, while resident in Rome, Italy.-Ambassadors:*Ronald P...

. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on June 30, 2005, after being nominated by President

President

A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...

 George W. Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

 on June 9. He was preceded by Mel Sembler

Mel Sembler

Melvin Floyd Sembler is former United States Ambassador to Italy , and former Ambassador to Australia and Nauru . He has also served as Chairman of the Board of the Sembler Company, which develops and manages shopping centers, and co-founder of Straight, Inc., a controversial drug-treatment center...

 as Ambassador to Italy and is the first American ambassador to San Marino

San Marino

San Marino, officially the Republic of San Marino , is a state situated on the Italian Peninsula on the eastern side of the Apennine Mountains. It is an enclave surrounded by Italy. Its size is just over with an estimated population of over 30,000. Its capital is the City of San Marino...

 from the United States. This new position was created as a result of the excellent relations between the two countries.

Education

Spogli was born in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 in 1948. He received an A.B. in history from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 1970, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. He earned an M.B.A.

Master of Business Administration

The Master of Business Administration is a :master's degree in business administration, which attracts people from a wide range of academic disciplines. The MBA designation originated in the United States, emerging from the late 19th century as the country industrialized and companies sought out...

 in 1975 from Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...

, where he was future President George Bush's roommate. He lived abroad in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 and Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

 for two years during his time at Stanford, and became fluent in the Italian language

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

. He is married and has a daughter named Caroline as well as a stepson, William.

Career

Spogli is a co-founder of Freeman Spogli & Co.

Freeman Spogli & Co.

Freeman Spogli & Co. is a private equity firm focused on leveraged buyout and recapitalization transactions involving growth companies in the retail, direct marketing, catalog and distribution sectors....

, a private equity

Private equity

Private equity, in finance, is an asset class consisting of equity securities in operating companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange....

 investment firm. Before that he was a Managing Director in the Investment Banking Division of Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. In 2002, President Bush appointed Spogli to a three-year term with the J. William Fulbright

J. William Fulbright

James William Fulbright was a United States Senator representing Arkansas from 1945 to 1975.Fulbright was a Southern Democrat and a staunch multilateralist who supported the creation of the United Nations and the longest serving chairman in the history of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...

Foreign Scholarship board. Spogli quit working at Freeman Spogli & Co. on July 31, 2005, and was sworn in as the U.S. Ambassador to Italy on August 10, 2005 and to San Marino in September 2006. He left post on February 6, 2009.