John W. Davison joins TALIM after nearly 30 years of global experience as an accomplished diplomat and negotiator with the State Department and the United Nations Development Programme. As Deputy US Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, John led teams negotiating at global conferences on Financing for Development, HIV/AIDS, Sustainable Development, and the Rights of the Child. John also served as Political Adviser on Iraq and the Middle East to the former US Ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson.
Much of John’s career has been in North Africa and the Sahel, beginning with his service as a Peace Corps Volunteer English teacher in Berkane, Morocco. John studied Arabic at the State Department’s Arabic Language Field School in Tunisia and later became its director. Elsewhere in the region, John has served in Guinea-Bissau, Cairo, Niger (as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires), and following his retirement from the US Foreign Service, with the UNDP in Cape Verde.
In addition to the unending challenge of collecting, preserving and sharing the Legation’s unique diplomatic and cultural history, among John’s top priorities is to deepen TALIM activities with its neighbors in the Tangier medina itself, and to broaden outreach efforts to Moroccan government leaders as well as to members of civil society (both Moroccan and expatriate) in Tangier. In particular, John supports programming for education for women and girls and for welcoming more Moroccan students to the Legation, in part through creating greater opportunities for US-Moroccan academic research and exchange.
