Mr James Hooley OBE

Biography

James Hooley was born and raised near Manchester, in the northwest of the United Kingdom. He studied Political Science at the University of Birmingham and joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2007. After two years in London, he took up his first overseas posting in Nairobi, Kenya, working on Somalia and spending his final year regularly travelling to Mogadishu as the UK prepared to reopen its embassy there.

In 2012, he returned to London to head the Sanctions Section in the former International Organisations Department, before serving as Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary (first William Hague, then Philip Hammond). In 2017, he was posted to Washington DC as Head of the Political Section, a role he held for five years during a particularly dynamic period in the UK–US relationship.

On return to London, he became Deputy Director of Protocol, leading on the UK’s foreign policy engagement with the Royal Family, including around the State Funeral of Her Late Majesty and the Coronation.

Mr James Hooley OBE now serves as His Majesty’s Ambassador to Cuba.