Career
She is currently a director of Boeing, Emerson Electric Company, 3M Company, Sara Lee Corporation, and Manpower Incorporated. Ridgway has been an American foreign policy leader since the Richard Nixon administration. She has acted as an international negotiator on behalf of the United States.
In the early 1970s, Ridgway negotiated longstanding issues over fishing rights in Brazil, Peru and the Bahamas.
This led to her appointment in 1976 as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and Fisheries. During her tenure, she negotiated the 200-mile (370 km) fishing rights treaty.
Ridgway"s subsequent negotiations led to the return of property of United States. citizens from Czechoslovakia. As Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Negotiations and, subsequently, the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada, she was the lead negotiator at all five Reagan-Gorbachev summits.
Between Ridgway"s positions at the Department of State, she served as America"s Ambassador to Finland from 1977 to 1980 and as the Ambassador to the German Democratic Republic between 1983 and 1985.
Council on Foreign Relations
Trilateral Commission
Bilderberg Group
National Geographic Society (Trustee)
Brookings Institution (Trustee)
She was president of the Atlantic Council from 1989 to 1996, and currently the chairwoman of the Baltic-American Freedom Foundation.
