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A breakfast conversation with Derek Shearer, former US ambassador to Finland, about sports and diplomacy.
A breakfast conversation with Derek Shearer, former US ambassador to Finland, about sports and diplomacy.
Ambassador Shearer is Chevalier Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He also serves as Director of the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs, handling the college’s international relations and directing the expansion of its international affairs programs.
Ambassador Shearer served in the Clinton administration as an economics official in the Commerce Department, and then as Ambassador to Finland (1994-97). Among his many accomplishments were the creation of the administration’s coordinated strategy to the Nordic-Baltic region and the hosting of the Clinton-Yeltsin summit in Helsinki. After diplomatic service, Ambassador Shearer was a fellow at the Economic Strategy Institute and then at the Woodrow Wilson Scholars Center in Washington, DC. He also was a visiting Woodrow Wilson fellow and ambassador-in-residence at a number of colleges. He served as a foreign policy advisor to Vice President Gore during the 2000 Presidential campaign and to Senator Hillary Clinton in the 2007-2008 Presidential primary contests. He is a graduate of Yale, class of 1968, where his classmates included President George W. Bush and filmmaker Oliver Stone.
