Philip Lader, is a former US Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s and former Chairman of WPP plc, the global advertising/communications services firm (including Ogilvy & Mather, J. Walter Thompson, Young & Rubicam, Grey, Hill & Knowlton, Burson-Marsteller, Kantar, and Group M, with 205,000 people in 112 countries).

As a senior adviser to Morgan Stanley, he serves on several of its investment committees and boards of its private equity portfolio companies in addition to investment banking responsibilities. He is also a retired partner in the Nelson Mullins law firm.

In government, he also served as a member of President Clinton’s Cabinet as Administrator of the US Small Business Administration, Assistant to the President, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and deputy director of the US Office of Management and Budget.

Ambassador Lader serves, or has served, on the boards of RAND Corporation (formerly Vice Chairman), Lloyd's of London, Marathon Oil, AMC Entertainment, AES Corporation, UC Rusal, Songbird (Canary Wharf), Duck Creek Technologies, and Minerva Corporations, the British Museum, American Red Cross, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, St. Paul's Cathedral Foundation, Atlantic Council, and Bankinter Foundation for Innovation.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, 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.