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Ambassador John W. McDonald is a lawyer, diplomat,
former international civil servant, development expert and peacebuilder, concerned about world social, economic and ethnic problems. He spent twenty years of his career in Western Europe and the Middle East (Berlin, Frankfurt, Bonn, Paris, Ankara, Tehran, Karachi, and Cairo), and worked for sixteen years on United Nations economic and social affairs. From 1974 to 1978. he was Deputy Director-General of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland.
After 40 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, he became a law professor at the George Washington University (1987) and then the first President of the Iowa Peace Institute in Grinnell, Iowa (1988-1992). He is the co-founder (1992) and Chairman and CEO of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, in Washington D.C. which focuses on national and international ethnic conflicts, www.imtd.org.
He serves on the Advisory Board of George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR), and teaches regularly a course on conflict resolution and post-war peacebuilding at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. In 1982 he founded the non-governmental organization Global Water www.globalwater.org, and he is deeply involved in the U.N. Millennium Goals for Clean Drinking Water and Sanitation and global environmental issues. He has visited 102 countries and lectures frequently in the US and abroad.
Ambassador McDonald holds both a B.A. and a J.D. degree from the University of Illinois, and graduated from the National War College in 1967. He also received numerous awards and several Honorary Degrees from various universities across the country. He was appointed Ambassador twice by President Carter and twice by President Reagan to represent the United States at various UN World Conferences. His most recent book is The Shifting Grounds of Conflict and Peacebuilding: Stories and Lessons. |
