Amb. Prudence Bushnell

Pru Bushnell promotes leadership to growing audiences in the public service, including women executives and foreign affairs and national security experts. Since 2012, when she founded the Levitt Leadership Institute as a two-week leadership training initiative at Hamilton College, she has become increasingly sought after as a speaker, mentor and facilitator.

A management trainer before she joined the U.S. Foreign Service, Pru introduced leadership training to the Department of State in the mid-1980s before moving into senior positions overseas and in Washington. What she learned from the policy failures to mitigate a genocide in Rwanda in 1994 contributed to her leadership response as U.S. ambassador when al Qaeda attacked the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya (1998).

Her written works on leadership & terrorism were published by the New York Times, the Cambridge University Press, & the Foreign Service Journal. Pru is sought out as a public speaker, she has frequently appeared as a guest on television & radio news programs.

Her efforts to bring attention to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda were featured in the 2005 film, Sometimes in April, in which she is portrayed by actress Debra Winger. She is one of three ambassadors highlighted in the National Geographic special, Inside an Embassy.

Born in Washington, DC & educated in Germany, France, Pakistan & Iran, Ambassador Bushnell currently lives in the Washington, DC area.