He served as United States Ambassador to the Netherlands from 2001 until 2005 and Ambassador to Brazil from 2006 until 2009.
Presently he serves on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), the Secretary of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board (FAPB), the Advisory Board for SOUTHCOM, the Military Commander for Central and South America, and is a Commissioner on the Federal Commission on Drug Policy for the Western Hemisphere.
Today he also serves on the Board of the Council of the (continued on the next page) BOARD OF DIRECTORS 19 Americas, Council of American Ambassadors, Christie’s Advisory Board for the Americas, the Advisory Board of The Belfer Center for Sciences and International Affairs at Harvard, and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. He is also a Member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), and Co-Chairs the Big Barn Dialogues Conference at Yellowstone, Montana, the focus of which is the evolving relations between China and the United States.
Ambassador Sobel served on the Board of the Wenzhou Kean University based in Zhejiang Province, China and the Advisory Board of the American Military Commander of Europe and NATO, and by Presidential Appointment he previously served on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, as well as The Naval Post Graduate School Board in Monterey, California. He also served as a Board Member of Diamond Offshore Drilling (NYSE-DO) and the Millennium Promise Board of Directors, and a Board Member of Aegon (NYSE – AEG) and Alpinvest, a fund of funds group based in Amsterdam, NL. He was Chairman of Net2Phone (NASDAQ-NTOP), a pioneer internet telephony company that went public in 1999 and was acquired by AT&T in 2000.