Thomas O. Enders was born November 28, 1931 in Hartford, Connecticut. He graduated first in his class at Yale University in 1953. He obtained master's degrees at the University of Paris in 1955 and Harvard University in 1957.
Within a decade of entering the Foreign Service in 1958, Tom Enders had become Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Monetary Affairs. In 1970, he won the Arthur S. Flemming Award as one of the ten outstanding young men in the federal government.
From 1972 to 1974, Tom Enders served as chargé d'affaires in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In 1974, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, a position from which he supervised the American participation in the Group of Seven response to the first oil crisis.
In 1976, Tom Enders was appointed Ambassador to Canada. He engaged the United States in deeper political and economic relations with Canada, setting the stage for the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. His commitment to cross-border relations was manifest in the many speeches to audiences throughout Canada in which he addressed the importance of U.S./Canadian relations to diverse constituencies.
From 1979 to 1981 Tom Enders was Ambassador to the European Community, where he worked on reducing trade barriers and on other economic issues. As President Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs from 1981 to 1983, Tom Enders sought to be a balancing force at a time of conflict over U.S. policy in the region while giving priority to economic issues.
After serving as Ambassador to Spain from 1983 to 1986, Tom Enders retired from the Foreign Service to join Salomon Brothers as a managing director. He was awarded the highest honor conferred by the State Department on career officers upon his departure. At Salomon Brothers, he was the architect of the Latin American investment program and headed the New York International Corporate Finance Group. He served on the board of the Americas Society, the Alberta Northeast Gas Advisory Board, and as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
A mountaineer, Tom Enders explored extensively the Canadian Rockies and the Swiss Alps. He was a member of the Explorer's Club of New York and of the Alpine Club of Canada. He collected early maps chronicling the discovery of the Americas.
