Renaissance Weekend

Ambassador Philip Lader

Philip Lader, former U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, is Chairman of WPP Group plc (including J. Walter Thompson, Young & Rubicam, Ogilvy & Mather, Grey Global, Burson-Marsteller, and Hill & Knowlton, with 140,000 people in 107 countries), a Senior Adviser to Morgan Stanley, and a partner in the Nelson Mullins law firm. He serves on the boards of WPP, Lloyd’s of London, RAND, Marathon Oil, Rusal, and AES Corporations, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and The Atlantic Council.

Ambassador Lader served in President Clinton’s Cabinet as Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration and was White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Assistant to the President, and Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Previously, he was Executive Vice President of Sir James Goldsmith’s U.S. holdings and was President of Sea Pines Company and universities in South Carolina and Australia.

An Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford University, and London Business School, an Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he was President of Business Executives for National Security and served on the boards of the American Red Cross, the British Museum, St. Paul's Cathedral, and several banks and universities. His education includes Duke University, The University of Michigan, Oxford University, and Harvard Law School, and he has been awarded honorary doctorates by 14 universities, Rotary International's 2007 Global Service to Humanity Award, and the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures & Commerce's 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal.

Linda LeSourd Lader

Linda LeSourd Lader is President of the Renaissance Institute, which she co-founded in 1981, and a member of the pastoral staff at Washington, D.C.'s historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Reflecting a career-long commitment to non-profit initiatives, she is a trustee of the Tony Blair Foundation and Communities in Schools, and has served on the boards of Habitat for Humanity International, International Justice Mission, Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of Values in Public Life, Spoleto Festival USA, the International Tennis Hall of Fame, Alpha Ministries International, and the American International University in London.

From 1993 to 1996, she assisted with White House liaison to American communities of faith and advised the President on public policy issues pertaining to religion. Associated with the National Prayer Breakfast Ministries throughout the 1970s, she coordinated the 1979 National Prayer Breakfast. In recognition of such public service, she received the International Women’s Foundation Leadership Award in 2000.

Mrs. Lader's education includes Yale Divinity School, where she was a Fellow at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, Ohio Wesleyan University (a fifth-generation graduate), and Emma Willard School. Her editing work continues the tradition of her parents – Leonard LeSourd, longtime founding editor of Guideposts, and Catherine Marshall, author of A Man Called Peter, Christy and other best-selling books.