Donald B. Easum

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Donald B. Easum (born 1923) spent 27 years in the United States Foreign Service at posts in Nicaragua, Indonesia, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Upper Volta (Ambassador, 1971-74) and Nigeria (Ambassador, 1975-79). During the Nixon/Ford Administration, Ambassador Easum served as Assistant Secretary for the Bureau for African Affairs. Earlier State Department assignments included Executive Secretary of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Staff Director of the United States National Security Council's Interdepartmental Group for Latin America. Ambassador Easum was also president of the Africa-America Institute from 1980 to 1988. He has held consultant positions with USAID, WorldSpace, River Blindness Foundation, Volunteers in Technical Assistance and Global Business Access. In April 2003, he was a member of the National Democratic Institute's monitoring team for the Nigerian elections. He is a Board member of the American School of Tangier/Marrakech, Pact (Washington, DC), and the Rothko Chapel in Houston. He was Senior Fellow at Yale University's Stimson Seminar from 1998 to 2004 and has taught at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has lectured widely in the United States, Europe and Africa on U.S.-African relations. Ambassador Easum holds a B.A. degree (Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as M.P.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. He also studied at the University of London on a Fulbright scholarship and in Buenos Aires on a Doherty Foundation grant and a Penfield fellowship. He served in the Pacific theater during World War II. As of 2006, he lives in New York City. He has four children and seven grandchildren whose birthplaces include Tokyo, Amsterdam, Dakar, São Paulo, Jakarta, and Managua. He plays the trumpet, sings in choirs, and baby-sits.