The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2011

n June 23, Ambassador Rozanne L. Ridgway received the American For- eign Service Association’s Award for Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy, in recognition of a distin- guished 32-year Foreign Service career and a lifetime of public service. Past re- cipients of the award include U. Alexis Johnson, Frank Car- lucci, George H.W. Bush, Lawrence Eagleburger, Cyrus Vance, David Newsom, Lee Hamilton, Thomas Pickering, George Shultz, Richard Parker, Richard Lugar, Morton Abramowitz, Joan Clark, Tom Boyatt, Sam Nunn and Bruce Laingen. Roz Ridgway was born in St. Paul, Minn., on Aug. 22, 1935. While still enrolled at Hamline University, she passed the Foreign Service exam and was accepted into the Service. So upon graduation from Hamline in June 1957, she imme- diately left for Washington, D.C., to take the A-100 orienta- tion course and remained inWashington for her first Foreign Service assignment, in an office working on educational ex- changes. Her overseas postings includedManila, Palermo and Oslo; Nassau, where she was deputy chief of mission; and appoint- ments as U.S. ambassador to Finland (1977-1980) and the German Democratic Republic (1982-1985). In Washington, she served as a political-military officer in the Office of North Atlantic Treaty Organization Affairs, and as desk officer and, later, deputy director for policy and planning in what was then the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs (now Western Hemi- sphere Affairs). Over the course of a 32-year diplomatic career, Ambassa- dor Ridgway used her skills and expertise to negotiate com- plex multilateral and bilateral agreements across a host of issues affecting the interests of the United States. Beginning in the 1970s, for example, Ridgway was a central player in the task of containing disputes over fishing rights to prevent bloodshed and damage to significant international and do- mestic interests. Toward this end, she worked closely with the American fishing industry, Congress and officials from Ecuador, Peru, Brazil and the Bahamas. Her success in this regard led to her appointment in 1975 as deputy assistant secretary of State for oceans and fisheries affairs and, in 1976, her confirmation by the Senate as ambassador for oceans and fisheries affairs. Later that year, when Congress enacted a 200-mile exclu- sive economic zone before such zones were accepted by the international community, Ridgway led dedicated teams of U.S. negotiators to reconstruct an entire body of law govern- ing ocean resource management, particularly fisheries, and international marine science. She personally conducted many of the negotiations and worked with key congressional figures to obtain approval of all the agreements before the legislation came into effect. The whirlwind 13-month effort successfully prevented conflict on the high seas. As Counselor of the Department of State and, subse- quently, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Nego- tiations, Ridgway brought to a successful conclusion the slow-moving negotiations for the payment of claims of Amer- 56 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 A C ONSUMMATE N EGOTIATOR : R OZANNE L. R IDGWAY L AST MONTH AFSA RECOGNIZED A MBASSADOR R IDGWAY ’ S MANY CONTRIBUTIONS TO A MERICAN DIPLOMACY AND HER LIFETIME OF PUBLIC SERVICE . B Y S TEVEN A LAN H ONLEY Steven Alan Honley is the editor of the Journal . O