William Perry - Later Career

Later Career

After he left the Pentagon, Perry returned to San Francisco to join the board of Hambrecht and Quist as a senior adviser. He also rejoined the faculty at Stanford University, becoming a professor at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a member of the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institution.

Mr. Perry serves on the board of directors of Los Alamos National Security, LLC, the company that operates the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the board of directors for LGS Innovations, a wholly owned subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent engaged in government services. Perry is an Advisory Board member for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. Perry is also a member of the Board of Sponsors for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He is Member of the Supervisory Council of the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe. Perry also sits on the Advisory Board of the Commonwealth Club of California and the Board of Directors of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, DC- based think tank that specializes in U.S. national security issues. Perry is also on the Advisory Board of the Truman National Security Project, a progressive leadership institute that trains the next generation of foreign policy and national security leaders.

In 1999, Perry was awarded the James A. Van Fleet Award by The Korea Society.

On January 5, 2006, he participated in a meeting at the White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State to discuss United States foreign policy with Bush administration officials.

In March, 2006, he was appointed to the Iraq Study Group, a group formed to give advice on the U.S. government's Iraq policy.

On June 17, 2006, Perry gave the featured commencement speech to engineering and science graduates at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

On October 1, 2008, Perry joined the financial board of the Thailand based manufacturing company, Fabrinet, on which he continues to serve.

On October 16, 2008, Perry was award the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy.

In 2007, Secretary Perry joined three other eminent statesmen, former Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and Henry Kissinger, and former Senator Sam Nunn in calling for the United States to take the lead in reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons. Their op-ed, "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons", published in the Wall Street Journal, reverberated throughout the world, and is one of the key factors that has convinced political leaders and experts internationally that the conditions are in place to achieve that goal. In 2010 the four produced the documentary Nuclear Tipping Point. The film is introduced by General Colin Powell, narrated by Michael Douglas and includes interviews with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 2011 he joined a team of former government officials from various countries, formed under the auspices of the Governor of Hiroshima Prefecture Hidehiko Yuzaki to prepare a plan for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. This project is titled Hiroshima for Global Peace.