Ambassador John E. Lange (Ret.)

Ambassador John E. Lange (Retired) joined the United Nations Foundation in July 2013. Lange, who has extensive leadership experience in global health issues and longstanding involvement in United Nations affairs, serves as the primary focal point for the Foundation’s global health diplomacy activities. He is the co-chair of the Polio Partners Group of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a position he has held since the group’s launch in Geneva in March 2012. Prior to joining the UN Foundation, Ambassador Lange spent four years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation engaged in high-level outreach to governments and international organizations to advance the Gates Foundation’s global health and development goals in Africa. Ambassador Lange had a distinguished 28-year career in the Foreign Service at the U.S. Department of State, where he was a pioneer in the field of global health diplomacy. He served as the Special Representative on Avian and Pandemic Influenza; Deputy Inspector General; Deputy U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator at the inception of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; and Associate Dean in the Leadership and Management School of the Foreign Service Institute. He was the U.S. Ambassador to Botswana from 1999 to 2002, where he oversaw operations of seven U.S. Government agencies and the provision of U.S. assistance for the prevention, care and treatment of AIDS. He simultaneously served as Special Representative to the Southern African Development Community. Lange headed the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as Charge d'Affaires during the August 7, 1998, terrorist bombing, for which he received the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award for "skilled leadership" and "extraordinary courage." From 1991 to 1995, while at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Lange managed U.S. humanitarian and refugee assistance channeled through international organizations. He also had tours of duty in the State Department Bureaus of African Affairs, Western Hemisphere Affairs and Management in Washington and at U.S. Embassies in Lome, Togo; Paris, France; and Mexico City, Mexico. Prior to joining the diplomatic service in 1981, he worked for five years at the United Nations Association of the USA in New York. Ambassador Lange is the author of a case study describing international negotiations on the sharing of pandemic influenza viruses and access to vaccines in the book, Negotiating and Navigating Global Health: Case Studies in Global Health Diplomacy (2012). He has delivered lectures on issues related to global health diplomacy at Chatham House, London; the Council on Foreign Relations, New York; and numerous other venues. He has written several journal and magazine articles on the Dar es Salaam Embassy bombing, crisis management and humanitarian assistance, and he writes a blog on The Huffington Post.