Mr. Mueller served as a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State for 32 years specializing in U.S. relations with China and Asia. The culmination of his career was as American Consul General to Hong Kong from 1993 to 1996, leading the 400-person Consulate General. These were the formative years leading up to Hong Kong’s reversion to China in 1997.
Following his career with the State Department, Mr. Mueller began a second career in education. In 1998 Mr. Mueller became Head of School of Northfield Mount Hermon School, a college preparatory boarding high school in Massachusetts. During his seven-year tenure he deepened the school’s historic commitment to global education, particularly to China and Asia, and led the strategic planning and decision-making to become a smaller school of 650 students on one campus rather than two. He then served from 2005 to 2010 as Head of School of Hong Kong International School, a pre-K through grade 12 school with a diverse, global student body of over 2500 students. Most recently he served as Head of School of Shanghai American School, a 3,000-student international Pre-K through 12 school on two campuses.
Mr. Mueller’s diplomatic career included assignments to Asia and the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. At the Department he worked at a senior level for Secretary of State George Shultz coordinating the worldwide work of the State Department and subsequently for Secretary James Baker carrying out the President’s national security agenda with Congress. Earlier in his career Mr. Mueller worked for and traveled with Secretary Henry Kissinger. The highlight of that assignment was meeting his future wife, Claire, who was also a career diplomat.
In the early years of his career, after two years of Chinese language training, he and Claire were assigned to the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing from 1976 to 1978. They were there to witness the events surrounding Chairman Mao Zedong’s passing, the end of the Cultural Revolution, and the subsequent launching of economic reform under Deng Xiaoping. Previously he had studied Vietnamese for a year and then served two assignments to the American Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam.
Mr. Mueller also served at the American Consulate General in Hong Kong in the 1980’s as Chief of the Economic Section and earlier on the team which negotiated the first US-PRC trade agreement. He was also Director of the Asia Society Hong Kong Center from 1996 to 1998, an educational non-profit organization building understanding among the peoples of Asia and the U.S. He has traveled widely throughout Asia and seen firsthand the transformation of China and other Asian countries.
Mr. Mueller has served on several non-profit education boards of trustees, including a previous term on the CAIS board and Hong Kong International School.
Mr. and Mrs. Mueller have two sons. Jonathan and family live in Colorado, and Eric and family live in San Francisco. The Muellers are proud grandparents of five young grandchildren, Jackson, Katherine, Clara, Allison, and Gillian.