STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Douglas T. Hickey and his family are headed to the Happiest Country on Earth, according to the World Happiness Report, which just named it the world’s happiest country for the fifth year in a row.
But, as the new U.S. ambassador to Finland, the Sun Valley resident is heading into what could be a trying situation in a country that shares a border with Russia.
“Had he taken the oath of office prior to Feb 24 when Russia invaded Ukraine the tenor of this ceremony would have been much different,” said Sun Valley Mayor Peter Hendricks.
Instead, said Hendricks, Hickey is taking on his new duties in a part of the world that is intimately positioned amidst ever-changing and proliferating tragic events.
Sun Valley’s City Clerk Nancy Flannigan administered the oath of office to the newly appointed ambassador Wednesday morning. He’d been confirmed by the Senate on March 25 and President Joe Biden appointed him ambassador on March 30.
The United States has been sending ambassadors to Finland since 1919 when it recognized the country as an independent state after the country declared its independence from Russia following the Bolshevist Revolution. But it temporarily severed diplomatic relations with Finland in 1944 as a result of Finland’s war against the Soviet Union.
The family elected to have the oath of office oath ceremony in Sun Valley, rather than fly back to Washington, D.C. for it.
“Because of COVID, we were given the option to have the oath locally or in D.C. We’re connected to this community. These are our friends,” said Dawn Ross, Hickey’s wife as she looked over more than 30 people assembled in Sun Valley’s City Council Chambers.
Sun Valley’s City Clerk Nancy Flannigan went to work consulting with YouTube and the White House about what she needed to do to officiate the ceremony.
“I usually just administer oaths to City Council members so this is exciting,” she said.
Hendricks said he is proud that Hickey is “a guardian of America.”
He’s an achiever who treats politics not as an intellectual exercise but as a way of moving the world forward, he added. He’s a patriot, he added, and all that “gives me reason to be optimistic.”
An American businessman and diplomat, Hickey got a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics in 1977 from Siena College in New York. He has more than 30 years of senior-level positions in the telecom, Internet and technology industries.
He worked during the 1990s as president of Metropolitan Fiber Systems; GlobalCenter, a web hosting service that was one of the first to provide web hosting and content distribution on the web, and as CEO of Critical Path, Inc., which provides messaging services to corporations around the globe.
He was a partner at HummerWinblad Venture Partners, one of the Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital firms, in San Francisco from 2000 to 2010 before taking a position as president and CEO of BinWise, Inc., a company that provides analytics for businesses in the food and beverage industry.
He is currently the managing director of Hickey Gryphon QOF, based in Eagle, Idaho.
The family bought a home north of Ketchum in 2008 and moved here fulltime in 2016, enrolling their twin boys—now 12—in Hemingway STEAM School.
“Right now, he just wants to play soccer,” Ross said of one of the twins. “He’ll feel better about the move if he finds they play soccer in Finland.”
Hickey was appointed to serve as the United States ambassador and commissioner general to Expo Milano by President Barack Obama in 2014. And it was rumored that President Joe Biden might nominate him as Ambassador to Italy, but Hickey was nominated as Ambassador to Finland in October 2021 with hearings held on his nomination before the Senate foreign Relations Committee in March.
He is expected to be ambassador to Finland through the end of President Biden’s first term two years and eight months from now.
“I’m thrilled,” he said. “It’s a real interesting time to be ambassador to Finland.”
Hickey oversaw efforts to create the USA Pavilion, which addressed America’s food security and the challenges of feeding the more than 9 billion people who will inhabit the earth by 2050 at Expo Milano.
Taking the oath of office means that Hickey can get on with his official duties. He was in Washington, D.C., for instance, when the leader of Finland was there recently but the two could not talk official business.
Hickey has been taking part in briefings, talking to numerous diplomats and devouring boxes of documents that have been sent to him in preparation for his job.
“He takes it very seriously. He will know more about Finland than the Finnish before he’s through,” promised Ross.
Hickey plans to head to Helsinki in May and his family will follow.
“I think this will be a very different experience,” said Ross. “The other ambassadorship was different because there was no infrastructure set up for us. In Italy we had to find housing and furniture--we did everything ourselves. In Finland we have a beautiful residence awaiting us.”
Even though most Finns speak English, Ross said she’s learned a few simple phrases and her children are trying to learn the language, as well.
“We have to be careful that we don’t say anything that would get us in trouble,” she said. “But I’m excited as we’ll be in the midst of Scandinavian countries, Continental Europe, even the former Soviet Union.”