Ambassador Winston Lord

WINSTON LORD is Chairman Emeritus of the International Rescue Committee and former Ambassador to China. The IRC, the largest non-sectarian organization that both helps refugees aboard and resettles them in the United States, operates in some forty countries and twenty-five cities.

For over four decades Ambassador Lord has been at the center of U.S.–China relations. Throughout the 1970s Lord accompanied Presidents Nixon and Ford and Henry Kissinger on all nine trips to China. From 1969 to 1973 he was on the National Security Council staff and Special Assistant to the NSC advisor. From 1973 to 1977 he was the State Department's Director of Policy Planning. From 1977 to 1985 he was the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and throughout the early 1990s served as chairman for the National Endowment for Democracy and the Carnegie Endowment National Commission on America and the New World. He also served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs from 1993 to 1997.

Ambassador Lord holds a B.A. from Yale (Magna Cum Laude) and finished first in his class at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy while studying for his M.A. He has received several honorary degrees, plus the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award and the Defense Department’s Outstanding Performance Award. Ambassador Lord has provided commentary for major TV networks and his articles have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time and Foreign Affairs.