Rockefeller Financial has turned to a top US diplomat in the person of Reuben Jeffery to be its new chief executive, taking up the post on 7 September, the multi-family office titan said yesterday.

Jeffery will have responsibility for the general oversight of the company and its four business groups: Rockefeller Wealth Advisors, Rockefeller Asset Management, Rockefeller Capital Partners, and Rockit Solutions.

His appointment brings to an end a search for a new CEO following the death last year of Jim McDonald, who had headed the company for eight years.

Jeffery has been a senior advisor at the Center  for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, DC and previously served in the US government as under secretary of state for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs, where he led the work of the department.

He also spent eighteen years at Goldman Sachs, where he was a managing partner at the firm’s Paris office and of its European Financial Institutions Group in London. Prior to that, he was a corporate attorney with Davis Polk & Wardwell.