Member of the Institut de France and President of the Geneva Center for Security Policy Fondation Council (GCSP), Jean-David Levitte has had a distinguished and outstanding career in the French Foreign Service. Ambassador Levitte was the Senior Diplomatic Adviser and Sherpa of President Sarkozy from 2007 to 2012. Ambassador to the United States from 2003 to 2007, he was previously Ambassador to the United Nations between 2000 and 2002. He served as Senior Diplomatic Adviser and Sherpa of President Chirac from 1995 to 2000. From 1990, he held senior positions in the French Foreign Ministry, first as Assistant Secretary for Asia and then as Undersecretary for Cultural and Scientific Cooperation. In 1988, he served as the French Ambassador to the United Nations Office in Geneva. When he joined the Foreign Service in 1970, he was first posted in Hong Kong and Beijing. A few months after his election in 1974, President Valery Giscard d’Estaing asked him to work on his staff at the Elysee Palace, where he stayed from 1975 to 1981. Ambassador Levitte earned a law degree and is a graduate of Sciences-Po and of the National School of Oriental Languages, where he studied Chinese and Indonesian.
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