Rozanne L. Ridgway

Who is Rozanne L. Ridgway?

Rozanne Lejeanne Ridgway served 32 years with the U.S. State Department, holding several posts, including ambassador to Finland and to East Germany, and finished her career as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs. She is currently a director of Boeing, Emerson Electric Company, 3M Company, Sara Lee Corporation, and Manpower Inc..

Ridgway has been an American foreign policy leader since the Richard Nixon administration. She has acted as an international negotiator on behalf of the United States.

In the early 1970s, Ridgway negotiated longstanding issues over fishing rights in Brazil, Peru and the Bahamas. This led to her appointment in 1976 as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and Fisheries. During her tenure, she negotiated the 200-mile fishing rights treaty. Ridgway's subsequent negotiations led to the return of property of U.S. citizens from Czechoslovakia.

As Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Negotiations and, subsequently, the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada, she was the lead negotiator at all five Reagan-Gorbachev summits. These brought the first substantive reductions in nuclear weapons, signaled the beginning of the end of Communism and the Cold War, and established the fundamental realignment of global power as America prepared to enter the twenty first century.