Quick Facts
Biography
Philip Lader (born March 17, 1946), the former U.S. Ambassador to the UK, was chairman of WPP plc (including Ogilvy & Mather, J. Walter Thompson, Young & Rubicam, Burson-Marsteller, Hill & Knowlton and 110 other companies, with 205,000 employees in 112 countries).
As a senior adviser to Morgan Stanley, he has served on several of its investment committees and boards of its private equity portfolio companies (including Songbird plc/Canary Wharf), in addition to investment banking responsibilities. He is also an adviser to Palantir Technologies, the Silicon Valley "big data" firm, and serves on the boards of RAND Corporation (formerly Vice Chairman), Marathon Oil, Minerva, and Bankinter Foundation for Innovation. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
He formerly served on the boards of Lloyds of London, AES Corporation (the global power company), UC Rusal, the British Museum, the American Red Cross, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and St. Paul's Cathedral Foundation and has been a partner in the Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough law firm (with 700 lawyers across the U.S.).He is an Honorary Fellow of London Business School and Oxford University's Pembroke College, and an Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple (British Inns of Court).
In 1981, he and his wife, Linda LeSourd Lader, founded Renaissance Weekends, the non-partisan retreats that seek to build bridges between innovative leaders from diverse fields. They continue to host five Renaissance Weekends each year around the U.S.
Education and personal life
Lader graduated with a BA in political science as a Phi Beta Kappa member from Duke University in 1966, received the MA in History from the University of Michigan in 1967, completed graduate studies in law and English constitutional history at Oxford University from 1967 to 1968, and received his JD as a Leopold Schepp Scholar from Harvard Law School in 1972.
He is married to Linda LeSourd Lader. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, where she was a Fellow at its Center for Faith & Culture, and fifth-generation graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University.She was Associate Pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. and is now Associate Pastor of Gardens Presbyterian Church in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.Prior to ordination, she was engaged in a Washington, D.C., lay ministry and assisted President Bill Clinton in his outreach to the nation's communities of faith.
Philip and Linda Lader have two daughters. Mary-Catherine, who holds JD/MBA degrees from Harvard University, was an investment analyst with Goldman Sachs' Special Situations Group and is Chief Operating Officer of BlackRock Digital Wealth.Whitaker Lader, who holds the MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, served as the Sundance Institute's Manager of Creative Initiatives, was Executive Director of the Ivy Film Festival, and is Head of Production & Development at Oscar-winner Casey Affleck's film production company, SeaChange Productions. Both daughters hold the B.A. degree from Brown University.
Career
During his studies at Harvard Law School, Lader was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Newton College of the Sacred Heart (subsequently merged with Boston College) and a teaching assistant to Harvard Law Professor Paul Freund and Harvard Political Philosophy Professor Louis Hartz. After graduation, he was a law clerk to the late Judge Paul Roney, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit (formerly Fifth Circuit) and was associated with the New York law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell.He served in the U.S. Army (JAG) Reserves from 1969 to 1975.
Lader was president of Sea Pines Company, a developer/operator of large-scale recreation communities including Hilton Head Island and Kiawah Island. Upon sale of that company in 1983, he was president of Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, which was awarded the National Gold Medal for "general improvement in programs" by the Council for Advancement & Support of Education during his tenure, and served until becoming a candidate in the Democratic primary field for the 1986 gubernatorial election in South Carolina, finishing second to then-Lieutenant Governor Michael R. Daniel and foregoing the run-off in support of Daniel, who narrowly lost to Republican Carroll Campbell in the general election.
From 1986 to 1989, Lader was Executive Vice President of Sir James Goldsmith's U.S. holdings – which included America's then-largest private landholdings, sixth-largest forest products company, largest computer supplies supplier, and oil and gas interests. After the assets' restructuring and sale, he was President and Vice-Chancellor of Bond University, Australia's first private university.
Under President Bill Clinton, Lader was confirmed three times by the U.S. Senate without dissent for U.S. Government appointments.He served as Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget until becoming White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President in December 1993, when The New York Times described him as "a longtime friend" of Clinton's. He was a member of President Clinton's Cabinet while serving as Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration from 1994 to 1997. During Clinton's second term, he was United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James's.
In 2001, Lader returned to the private sector in his WPP, Morgan Stanley and corporate board roles. He also was a director of Duck Creek Technologies, the insurance industry software developer, before its 2011 sale to Accenture.From 2001 to 2006, he also was the John West Professor of International Studies at The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina.
He has served as president of Business Executives for National Security, chairman of the Royal Academy of Arts American Trust, a member of Harvard Law School's Visiting Committee, Columbia University's International Advisory Board, Yale Divinity School's Advisory Board, and Brown University's Watson Institute of International Studies Advisory Board, and a member of the founding Council of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. In South Carolina, he was a trustee of Middleton Place Foundation (America's oldest landscaped gardens) and Liberty Fellows and was chairman of the South Carolina Small & Minority Business Council, a trustee of South Carolina State Colleges, and a director of the South Carolina Jobs-Economic Development Authority, First Carolina Bank, and the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce.
Honours
Lader has been awarded honorary doctorates by 14 universities. For his contributions to trans-Atlantic relations, the Royal Society for the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce awarded him the 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal, and he received the Rotary International Foundation's 2007 Global Service to Humanity Award and British-American Business' 2016 Founders Award.
Question Time
On September 13, 2001, two days after the September 11 attacks, Lader appeared as a guest on Question Time. Some members of the panel, and several members of the audience were critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East. One questioner stated ".. one of the reasons why the world despises America, is because it sees Israel as a terrorist, and America as one who harbours Israel as a terrorist." Lader was visibly upset when he replied "I have to share with you that I find it hurtful that one could suggest that a majority of the world despised the United States.. I simply want to say that it saddens me that it's possible on this night, within 48 hours, that one - because of the intensity of feeling on policy issues - can abstract ourselves from the senseless human victimisation and suffering that has occurred before us." The BBC later apologized for the behavior of the audience.