He was also the first executive director of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), establishing the international secretariat for the organization in Singapore.

He was active for over thirty years as an American diplomat and was a senior advisor to Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush.

He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1962 and graduated from Johns Hopkins University (School of Advanced International Studies (M.P.P.A., 1967)).

Upon joining the Foreign Service, Bodde became a political officer and Special Assistant to the Ambassador in Vienna, Austria, from 1962 to 1965.

In 1978 Bodde became the director of the Office of Pacific Islands Affairs at the Department of State, and retained that position until 1980; from 1980 to 1981 he was appointed by Jimmy Carter as Ambassador to Fiji,[3] Tonga, Tuvalu and Kiribati, serving simultaneously.

From 1989 until his appointment as Ambassador to the Marshall Islands he was the dean for senior seminar at the Foreign Service Institute at the Department of State in Washington, DC.

[5][6] On June 27, 1990, George H. W. Bush appointed William Bodde Jr. as United States Ambassador to the Marshall Islands.

[8] He remained an active lecturer, writer for a number of newspapers in the United States and speaker on foreign and security affairs, diplomatic history, and economics, having lectured at numerous colleges and universities in the United States and abroad.