John Kerry

Now, I am genuinely bowled over by this award and particularly by the comments that Yusif and Tom shared with all of you. I’m very grateful to David and to Foreign Policy for this award. I admire enormously what Foreign Policy does, and we need more, frankly, thinking and cutting-edge ideas about how we’re going to deal with a very, very complicated world. But let me make this absolutely clear, and it is not – it’s not talk, it’s real: I am accepting this award on behalf of the entire United States State Department. And that is because, as Bill knows, there is nothing that we do – not a phone call, not a meeting that I go to, not a decision that I reach that doesn’t depend to a great extent on the advice and support and input of colleagues at the State Department.

It is a team effort in every sense of the word, and I can’t tell you how in New York when we do the United Nations and I have 66 meetings in the course of a week, I go – it was 70-something the year before – I go from meeting to meeting and the microphones are there, the tables are set up, the right people are introduced, the interpreter booths are there. It’s a really remarkable bit of organization, and that happens again and again in repetition and repetition. And Ambassador Pete Selfridge is here; he’s our chief of protocol. (Applause.) In about one week, a little more than a week, we had an India security dialogue – the Security and Economic Dialogue with Penny shortly thereafter. We had President Xi arrive, we had the Pope arrive, and then we went to the week in UNGA with some 100-plus heads of state. Pete Selfridge and his people never missed a beat, and thank you, Pete, for an extraordinary job. (Applause.)