Pompeo Appoints West Point Pal, Ulrich Brechbuhl as @StateDept Counselor

May 3, 2018 By in Appointments, Defense Department, Pompeo, Secretary of State, State Department, Top Ranks Tags: , , , , ,

Posted: 4:28 am PT

 

A day after the 70th Secretary of State is formally sworn into office in Foggy Bottom, the State Department announced the appointment of Secretary Pompeo’s old friend from West Point, Ulrich Brechbuhl (Class 1986) as State Department Counselor. Another old buddy from West Point, Brian Bulatao, joined then Director Pompeo at the CIA as chief operating officer following his appointment there in 2017.

This position does not require Senate confirmation.  Given the existing relationship between the new secretary of state and the new counselor, it is highly likely that this appointment would last more than the three- month tenure of his predecessor, Maliz Beams who was appointed Counselor to Rex Tillerson  back when the State Department was drowning in bad Redesign juju (history.state.gov has not even bothered to update its list of counselors).

History.state.gov notes that the Counselor, who currently under law holds rank equivalent to an Under Secretary of State (P.L. 98-164; 97 Stat. 1017), serves as an adviser to the Secretary of State. The Counselor’s specific responsibilities have also varied over time. After career diplomat Kristie Kenney stepped down following Tillerson’s arrival at State, there were loud signals that the Counselor position would not be filled; only for it to be filled months later by a non-career appointee who was tasked with managing the redesign efforts that eventually fizzled.

Recent appointees to the Counselor position includes the following:

The Waldorf School of Garden City has a detailed undated bio of its alumnus, Ulrich Brechbuhl who the website says currently serves as the President of Appenseller Point, LLC a family investing and consulting business.

From 1994-1998, Ulrich was a consultant and manager with Bain & Company, a strategic management consulting firm. During his time at Bain, he led teams in a variety of industries (including high tech, aerospace and defense, construction etc.) that developed business unit as well as corporate level growth strategies, valued new business opportunities, designed and implemented reorganizations, and led cost cutting and profit enhancement projects.

Having been born in Switzerland, Ulrich hails from Garden City, New York and is fluent in four languages. He attended the Waldorf School of Garden City from Nursery through Grade 12. Upon reflecting on his years at Waldorf, he writes, “The variety of people I met and experiences I had during my formative years at Waldorf helped prepare me for the extremely disparate situations I have found myself in, both in the military as well as in civilian life.” He then attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, earning a Bachelor of Science degree with distinction in 1986. During his six and one-half years of active duty service as a cavalry officer, Ulrich experienced a myriad of assignments from leading troops patrolling the Iron Curtain with the Second Calvary, to serving as a general’s aide, to working as an operations officer during the Persian Gulf War with 1-7 Cavalry, First Cavalry Division. Ulrich’s service culminated with the successful command of an armored cavalry troop at Fort Hood, Texas.

Ulrich left the military in 1992 to attend Harvard Business School, from which he received his MBA in 1994. He currently serves on the Board of Alcentra Capital Corporation, a publicly traded business development company, and is an active member of the Rotary Club of Atlanta, the West Point Society of Atlanta, of which he is a past president, and the HBS Club of Atlanta.   He and his wife, Michelle, have three sons, Hans (17), Jacob (16) and Pirmin (14) and are very active in their church, the North Atlanta Church of Christ. He is also involved in a number of other civic organizations including serving on the Greater Atlanta Christian School Foundation Board, serving as an assistant scoutmaster with Boy Scout Troop 379, Atlanta Area Council, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Area Council, BSA.

Read more below:

Ulrich Brechbuhl

Wichita Business Journal’s profile of Thayer Aerospace in December 1998 highlights the relationship of the new secretary of state and the new counselor, and the origin/capital of their company.

Pompeo is the chief executive officer of Thayer Aerospace, a new player in Wichita’s rapidly changing machine shop industry.

Only 21 months old, Thayer is using the powerful force of new capital to buy established companies and consolidate them under one umbrella. […] The company’s capital base is drawn in part from Wichita’s Koch Venture Capital, a division of Koch Industries Inc., the nation’s second largest private company. Thayer also has capital flowing from two Dallas-based private equity groups: Cardinal Investment Co. and Bain & Co. […] Pompeo’s team is basically a reunion of a quartet of West Point buddies from the United States Military Academy class of 1986.

Also included are Brian Bulatao, chief operating officer; Ulrich Brechbuhl, chief financial officer; and Michael Stradinger, who is in charge of mergers and acquisitions. At West Point, the quartet’s members were no academic sloths. Pompeo graduated first in his class, Brechbuhl was fourth in the class and Bulatao was in the top 5 percent.

Like Pompeo, most enjoyed their time in the military after graduation, but were looking for new challenges. And they feared endless assignments to a series of desk jobs, a standard requirement to ascend in the military chain of command.

With backgrounds in engineering as well as management, they got together and discussed a possible future in a business entity. Out of that discussion came the birth of Thayer Aerospace (named after Col. Sylvanus Thayer, the founder of the U.S. Military Academy).

Read more here.

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