Robert Bestani

While most of his career has been in the private sector, Robert Bestani has served in the Departments of State, Treasury, Energy and Defense.

Robert Bestani
In all but the first of these positions he has been a member of the Senior Executive Service.

 Since 2012 Bob has served in a variety of positions for the Department of Energy. In that capacity, he has held several positions including:

  • The Director of International Finance and the Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for International Affairs; 
  • The Director of Risk Management and Business Outreach for the Loans Program Office (The LPO is a $76 billion program to promote clean energy generation and efficiency); 
  • While on a five year detail to the Department of Defense he served as a Professor of National Security and Economic Policy at the National Defense University and the National Intelligence University. For his service he was presented with the Joint Meritorious Civilian Service Award for "exceptional meritorious service" by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • Advisor to the Defense Science Board (2016) 

In prior years, Bob served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Monetary Affairs. Bob also served in the Economics Bureau of U.S. Department of State in the Food For Peace Program and later the Trade Policy Office. His public sector career also included six years as the Director General of Private Sector Finance at the Asian Development Bank. In that capacity, he increased the Bank's financings and earnings by a factor of 41 times and helped provide over $24 billion to infrastructure and capital markets programs across 22 Asian countries in support of economic development and poverty alleviation.

In his private sector career, Bob worked in corporate and international finance in a variety of positions with Citibank, Texaco, the Bank of America, Duke Energy and PricewaterhouseCoopers. In these positions he specialized in energy and high technology.

Bob also brings to Georgetown a rich academic background. Most recently he graduated from the Executive Education Program at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. From October 2008 to October of 2012, Bob worked as a Visiting Scholar at the Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects at Stanford University. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago where he studied International Economics, Finance and Computer Science. Over the years, Bob has been invited to lecture at Harvard, the University of Chicago, Columbia, MIT, Wharton, the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins (SAIS) and other leading universities.

 He has been a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1991.