Professional Affiliation

Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Hills & Company, International Consultants; former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (administration of President Gerald Ford); former United States Trade Representative (administration of President George W. Bush)

Expert Bio

Carla A. Hills is Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Hills & Company.  Ambassador Hills served as U.S. Trade Representative (1989-93) in the Bush (41) Administration and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice, in the Ford Administration. 

Ambassador Hills has served on a number of publicly traded corporate boards and also serves on a number of not-for-profit boards, including as Chair of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and of the Inter-American Dialogue; Co-Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations; member of the Executive Committee for the Peterson Institute for International Economics and of the Trilateral Commission, Co-Chair of the Advisory Board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and member of the board of the International Crisis Group. 

Before entering government, Ambassador Hills co-founded and was a partner in a major Los Angeles law firm.  She also served as Adjunct Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles Law School teaching antitrust law and co-authored The Antitrust Advisor, published by McGraw Hill.  She received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, her law degree from Yale University, and studied at Oxford.  She holds a number of honorary degrees, and in 2000, she was awarded the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor given by the Mexican government to a non-citizen.