Donald Trump named Rex Tillerson as his choice for the next secretary of state on Tuesday, potentially elevating an individual with no experience in public office to the position of America’s top diplomat for the first time in modern history.
But beyond Tillerson’s role as the chief executive officer of oil giant ExxonMobil, a post he has held since 2006, little is known about the man poised to succeed John Kerry if confirmed by the US Senate early next year.
A native of Wichita Falls, Texas, Tillerson was born to parents who met as teenagers at a Boy Scout camp. The meeting foreshadowed how the Boy Scouts of America, one of the largest youth organizations in the US, would shape Tillerson’s mindset.
“To understand Rex Tillerson, you need to understand scouting,” Ray L Hunt, a close friend of Trump’s nominee, told the Dallas News in a 2014 profile centering on Tillerson’s longtime dedication to the Boy Scouts.
His father, the article noted, worked at the organization for four decades. As a young boy, Tillerson was an Eagle Scout and went on to serve as the president of the Boy Scouts of America in 2010.
During his two-year tenure, the group continued to draw controversy for holding a ban on openly gay scout leaders and members. But Tillerson advocated acceptance toward gay scouts and, as a member of the Boy Scouts executive board, voted in favor of changing the policy in 2013.
Tillerson’s associates, according to the Dallas News profile, framed him as adhering to the Boy Scout code that values attributes such as dependability, loyalty and trustworthiness.
As a business leader, the 64-year-old has cut a more shrewd figure – negotiating deals with Russian oligarchs and Arab sheikhs at the world’s largest publicly traded oil company. He joined ExxonMobil in 1975 after obtaining a degree in civil engineering at the University of Texas. Throughout his career, Tillerson has maintained his Texas roots. He and his wife, Renda St Clair, reside in Irving and have four children.
The latest in a string of millionaires and billionaires selected by Trump for his incoming cabinet, Tillerson was paid $27.3m in 2015 and is just shy of Exxon’s mandatory retirement age of 65.
His dealings with Russia, and closeness with President Vladimir Putin, are already the subject of bipartisan ire that could threaten his prospects of being confirmed even by the Republican-led Senate. Tillerson openly backed the lifting of US sanctions on Russia, which reportedly cost Exxon $1bn, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Environmentalists have also sounded the alarm over Tillerson’s position on climate change.
Addressing an event hosted by the Council of Foreign Relations in 2012, Tillerson downplayed the threat posed by global warming.
“It’s an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions,” he said. “The fear factor that people want to throw out there to say we just have to stop this, I do not accept.”
Kathy Mulvey, the accountability campaign manager and advocate for the Climate & Energy team at the Union of Concerned Scientists, responded this week to reports of Tillerson’s nomination: “Coupled with the nomination of Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt for EPA administration, there’s a real concern that President-elect Trump is creating a government of, by, and for the oil and gas industry.
“The analogy of the nomination of Rex Tillerson for secretary of state would be akin to nominating a tobacco CEO as surgeon general.”
At a surface level, Tillerson’s backing of a carbon tax in 2009 has been cited by Exxon as evidence of its efforts to join the fight against climate change. The company also signalled its support for the Paris climate accord signed by the Obama administration, which Trump has vowed to repeal as president.
But attorney generals in several states are investigating whether Exxon withheld research from its shareholders and the public while denying the risks associated with climate change.
Tillerson, like Trump, is a political outsider whose policy views have largely been informed through decades spent in the private sector. And while he has required diplomatic skills to bolster an international business career, his preparedness for one of the most consequential posts in the world also, as with Trump, remains an open question.
