Ken Howery

Summary

Ken Howery served as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Kingdom of Sweden from September 2019 through January 2021. Following his nomination by the President, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee favorably reported Ken’s nomination to the Senate, which confirmed Howery with a bipartisan vote. As Ambassador, Ken’s priorities for the U.S.-Sweden relationship include strengthening security and defense cooperation with Sweden to counter the challenges posed by non-democratic regimes, deepening economic ties that provide prosperity to both countries, with a focus on promoting technology and entrepreneurship opportunities, and building upon these pillars to connect people from both countries through artistic, cultural, and scientific programs and exchanges. Before his confirmation as Ambassador, Ken served as a founder and partner at Founders Fund, which had over $3 billion under management and investments in more than 300 companies. Ken was also on the board of directors of ZocDoc, Cedar, and Quantcast. His work as a venture capitalist with a founder-friendly approach has now been recognized widely in the press, including the WSJ, Forbes, and Fortune, and he was selected to keynote the Harvard Business School Entrepreneurship Conference. He was named a Top 10 Venture Capitalist by Worth Magazine in 2013 and a member of the Forbes Midas List of top venture capital investors in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Prior to Founders Fund, Ken co-founded PayPal, where he was the first CFO. While at PayPal, Ken developed a product that accelerated much of the company's viral growth on eBay, helped raise over $200 million in private financing, helped with fundraising in Europe, worked on the company's public offerings, and assisted in the company's $1.5 billion sale to eBay. Ken also was a partner with Peter Thiel in his angel investing, helping diligence deals, including the Series A investment in Facebook. He was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and has been a member of the selection committee of the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers Program. He is a founding advisor to Kiva.org, served on the board of The Explorers Club, was a former member of the Council of Competitiveness, and is an Eagle Scout. Ken graduated with a degree in Economics from Stanford University, which included coursework in Germany and working at the Brandenburg Economic Development Corp.