David J. Lane

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Ambassador David J. Lane has been a leader of government and global non-profit organizations for more than 20 years, including as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies in Rome from 2012 to 2016. Ambassador Lane’s leadership in the non-profit sector includes serving from 2007 until 2011 as President and CEO of the ONE Campaign, the non-partisan advocacy organization co-founded by recording artist and activist Bono to fight extreme poverty and preventable diseases.

From 2001 to 2007, Ambassador Lane led public policy and advocacy efforts at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, building a powerful East Coast presence for the Seattle-based philanthropic foundation.

Ambassador Lane served in the Obama administration as Assistant to the President and Counselor to the White House Chief of Staff prior to his nomination in 2012 to become U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies in Rome. In this role, Ambassador Lane guided strategy-setting and governance of six multilateral agencies focused on food security, agricultural development, poverty alleviation, development finance, and rule of law promotion. During his tenure, he aggressively promoted the $3.5 billion “Feed the Future” initiative, a U.S. effort to spur international investment in agriculture and identify long-term solutions to hunger and poverty in developing nations. He helped guide reform of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s operations and strategy and promoted a global good governance and transparency agenda in his role as president of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO).

In the 1990s, Ambassador Lane held key appointments in the Clinton administration, including Executive Director of the White House National Economic Council and Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Earlier in his career he worked as a Legislative Assistant in the U.S. Senate.

Ambassador Lane holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Virginia and a Master of Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

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