Ambassador Jean-David Levitte is an Associate Fellow within the Global Fellowship Initiative of the GCSP. Today a member of the Institut de France, Jean-David Levitte has had a distinguished and outstanding career in the French Foreign Service, serving on the staff of three French Presidents and holding key senior positions in the French Foreign Service.
From 2007 to 2012, Ambassador Levitte was the Senior Diplomatic Adviser and Sherpa of President Sarkozy.
He served as Ambassador to the United States, from 2003 to 2007 during the difficult period of the war in Iraq.
From 2000 to 2002, he was the French Ambassador to the United Nations. In New York, Ambassador Levitte successfully handled several international negotiations, including resolution 1441 on Iraq.
Ambassador Levitte 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 was designated to his first position as Ambassador and served as the French Ambassador to the United Nations Office in Geneva.
Before 1988 Mr. Levitte was assigned as Deputy Chief of Staff to the Foreign Minister ; Deputy Assistant Secretary in the African Bureau ; Second Counsellor at the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations in New York.
Mr. Levitte joined the Foreign Service in 1970. He was first posted in Hong Kong and Beijing in the early 1970's. 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.
Born in 1946 in the south of France, Ambassador Levitte earned a law degree and is a graduate of Sciences-Po (the renowned Institute for Political Science in Paris) and of the National School of Oriental Languages, where he studied Chinese and Indonesian.
Ambassador Levitte is married to Marie-Cécile Jonas and has two daughters and three grandchildren.