Rex Tillerson

Rex Wayne Tillerson (born March 23, 1952) is an American energy executive who served as the 69th United States secretary of state from 2017 to 2018 in the administration of Donald Trump. From 2006 to 2016, he was chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of ExxonMobil.

Tillerson began his career as a civil engineer with Exxon in 1975 after graduating with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. By 1989 he had become general manager of the Exxon USA central production division. In 1995 he became president of Exxon Yemen Inc. and Esso Exploration and Production Khorat Inc. In 2006 Tillerson was elected chair and chief executive of ExxonMobil, the world's sixth-largest company by revenue. Tillerson retired from ExxonMobil effective January 1, 2017.

Tillerson is a longtime volunteer with the Boy Scouts of America and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. From 2010 to 2012, he was the national president of the Boy Scouts, its highest non-executive position. He is a longtime contributor to Republican campaigns, but did not donate to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. In 2014, Tillerson, who had made business deals on behalf of ExxonMobil with Russia, opposed the sanctions against Russia. He has previously been the director of the joint United States-Russia oil company Exxon Neftegas.

Tillerson became Secretary of State on February 1, 2017. An unconventional choice for the role, Tillerson's tenure was characterized by a lack of visibility in comparison to his predecessors in the traditionally high-profile position of Secretary of State. During Tillerson's tenure, new applications to work for the Foreign Service fell by 50 percent, and four of the six career ambassadors as well as 14 of the 33 career ministers, equivalent to military four- and three-star generals, departed. After their relationship deteriorated, Trump dismissed Tillerson in March 2018, making his tenure of fourteen months one of the shortest in recent history but not as short as Lawrence Eagleburger under President George H. W. Bush and Edmund Muskie under President Jimmy Carter. Tillerson was replaced by Mike Pompeo, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).