Governance

Elected as Chairman of the American Swiss Foundation in 2016, Robert Giuffra is a Partner and Vice Chair of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. He is a member of the Firm’s Management Committee, with overall responsibility for its Litigation practice. He focuses on bet-the-company, securities, commercial, banking, white-collar criminal, insurance, employment and tax litigation. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and Princeton University.

Mr. Giuffra has served in all three branches of the U.S. Government. He was as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Ralph Winter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He was the Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. He also served in the Reagan White House. He has been appointed by Governors of both political parties to serve in New York State Government, including as a member of the New York State Commission on Public Integrity and the New York State Ethics Commission. He is an alumnus of the 1996 Young Leaders Conference.

Markus U. Diethelm has been Group General Counsel of UBS Group AG since 2014, having held the same position at UBS AG since 2008, when he became a member of the GEB. He was a member of the Executive Board of UBS Business Solutions AG from 2015 to 2016. From 1998 to 2008, he served as Group Chief Legal Officer at Swiss Re, and he was appointed to that company’s Group Executive Board in 2007. Prior to that, he was with Los Angeles-based law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and focused on corporate matters, securities transactions, litigation and regulatory investigations while working out of the firm’s Brussels and Paris offices. From 1989 to 1992, he practiced at Shearman & Sterling in New York, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. In 1988, he worked at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York. After starting his career in 1983 with Bär & Karrer, he served as a law clerk at Uster District Court in Switzerland from 1984 to 1985.

Mr. Diethelm holds a law degree (lic. iur.) from the University of Zurich, a master’s degree (JSM) and a doctoral degree (JSD) from Stanford Law School. He is a qualified attorney-at-law admitted to the bar in Zurich, Geneva and New York State. He serves as Chairman of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce’s legal committee; Member of the Supervisory Board of the Fonds de Dotation LUMA / Arles; and Member of the New York State Council of Business Leaders in Support of Access to Justice.

Elected as Vice Chairman of the American Swiss Foundation in 2021, Ed McMullen served as Ambassador of the United States to Switzerland and Liechtenstein from November 2017 to January 2021. Ambassador McMullen is now a Senior Policy Advisor with Adams and Reese LLP, a law and public affairs firm with offices throughout the southeastern United States. He opened the firm's Charleston office to focus on economic development, foreign direct investment, and public affairs. He has also joined a private equity firm based in London. He will serve on several corporate boards and as trustee for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

As Ambassador, Mr. McMullen was recognized for forging the strongest bilateral relationship between the United States and Switzerland in history. Focusing on foreign direct investments, he met with over 300 CEOs and boards of directors, fostering relationships and creating a favorable environment for economic growth. During Mr. McMullen’s tenure as Ambassador, Switzerland moved from the eighth-largest to the sixth-largest foreign direct investor in the United States.

Mr. McMullen is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College and an alumnus of the 1995 Young Leaders Conference. He is married to Margaret Ann (Wade) McMullen and they have two children, Thomas and Katherine. The reside in Charleston, South Carolina.

Steven G. Hoch is a partner of Brown Advisory, an investment firm advising private clients and institutions on diversified portfolios and related strategic and governance advice. The firm has been recognized for its strength in sustainable investing. Mr. Hoch was a founding partner of Highmount Capital LLC, an investment and wealth management firm which was successfully merged with Brown Advisory in 2015. He began his career at Chemical Bank in New York and Zurich. He also had client advisory and leadership roles at Bessemer Trust in New York and Pell Rudman (now Atlantic Trust) in Boston.

Mr. Hoch is Chairman of the Corporation Board of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and previously chaired the Investment and Nomination Committees. He serves as the Chairman of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, and previously completed two terms on the Smithsonian National Board. Mr. Hoch is Chairman Emeritus of the American Swiss Foundation, a Senior Mentor of swissnex in Cambridge and on the President’s Council of Ceres. Mr. Hoch is a former director of Nestle SA, where he served on the Nomination and Sustainability Committee.

Mr. Hoch has a BA degree in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a dual American/Swiss citizen and resides in Boston.

Patricia Schramm has devoted her career to promoting dialogue between the United States and Switzerland. She joined the American Swiss Foundation as its President in 2003. Under her leadership, the organization has expanded programming, membership and financial support, now serving more than 1,300 alumni of the Young Leaders Conference and hundreds of senior business and political leaders in both countries. From 1996 to 2002, she was Cultural Attaché of the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York, and she served for seven years on the Board of Directors of the Swiss Institute. Formerly, she worked for Novartis in New York.

A graduate of the University of Zürich, Mrs. Schramm holds a Master’s degree in English, Philosophy, and German Literature. She was a Visiting Student at Harvard College, a Fellow of the Remarque Forum (New York University) and a participant in the 1999 Young Leaders Conference of the American Swiss Foundation. A dual citizen of the United States and Switzerland, she lives in the New York area with her husband, American photographer Frank Schramm, and their three college-aged children.