William Armistead Moale Burden Jr. was an American banker, art collector, and philanthropist. He was U.S. Ambassador to Belgium under President Eisenhower. He began his career at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. as an aviation research analyst. In 1935, he was a director of the United Air Lines Transport Corporation. In 1940, he was named to Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co’s board of trustees. In 1949, he founded his own investment company, William A. M. Burden & Co., to pool and manage his family's wealth. He was also a director of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Burden was the son of William Armistead Moale Burden Sr., and Florence Vanderbilt, making him a descendant of both the elite Burden and Vanderbilt bloodlines. His paternal grandparents were I. Townsend Burden and Evelyn Byrd Moale. Evelyn’s father, William Armistead Moale, was a descendant of the Carter and Byrd families of Virginia. The Byrd and Carter families are political bloodlines who made their fortune through slave-worked plantations.

The American Vanderbilt dynasty began with Cornelius Vanderbilt, an American business magnate who made his fortune in the railroad and shipping industries in the 1800s. After his death, Corenlius’ son William Henry Vanderbilt and his grandsons Cornelius Vanderbilt II and William Kissam Vanderbilt took over the family’s railway investments. The Burden family is an elite American bloodline, who were prominent in the steel, iron, and banking industries.

Historical Roster of Directors and Officers at cfr.org:
https://www.cfr.org/historical-roster-directors-and-officers

Historical Roster of Directors and Officers
Members of the Board

Thomas K. Finletter 1944–67
William A.M. Burden 1945–74
Walter H. Mallory 1945–68

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanderbilt_family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Burden_family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Byrd_family_(Virginia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Carter_family_(Virginia)