Strobe Talbott First Deputy Secretary of State of the United States Country: USA

Biography of Strobe Talbott

Strobe Talbott, the Deputy Secretary of State, has been playing an increasingly prominent role in trying to find a way out of the Kosovo deadlock and resolve the most acute Balkan crisis since the breakup of Yugoslavia. Born in Dayton, Ohio, Talbott grew up in a civil servant's family. He was affectionately called "Stroobie" by his loved ones. He successfully graduated from Yale University, where he wrote his thesis on the works of Tyutchev, and by that time, he was already fluent in Russian.

Subsequently, Talbott spent three years at Oxford University, studying in the same group as Bill Clinton. He entered diplomacy after working as a correspondent for Time magazine in Moscow for several years and joining the editorial board of the magazine in September 1989. Talbott gained widespread recognition for his work on Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs, which he translated and edited for publication in the United States.

In January 1993, Talbott was appointed as the Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to the Newly Independent States and Eastern Europe, as well as the Special Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State on the new independent states. Talbott is married to Brooke Lloyd Shearer, a former journalist whom he met at Oxford. They have two sons, Devin and Adrian.