Christopher J. LaFleur is vice chairperson of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. Ambassador LaFleur founded LM Associates in 2011. He served previously as U.S. ambassador to Malaysia (2004-2007), vice chairman and head of government relations and corporate responsibility at J.P. Morgan Japan (2008-2011), and Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan.
Prior to his service in Malaysia, Ambassador LaFleur held a wide variety of senior U.S. Foreign Service positions managing diplomacy with Asia, including as director of the State Department’s Office of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1991-93), deputy director of the American Institute in Taiwan (1993-1997), minister and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo (1997-2001) and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2001-2003). In 2003-2004, he headed the State Department team in talks charting the future of the U.S. alliances with Japan and the Republic of Korea and served as the Cyrus Vance Fellow in Diplomatic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Mr. LaFleur currently also serves as Special Advisor to the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, Chairman of the Board of the DTCC Data Repository Japan, as Senior Director at McLarty Associates, as an outside director of Tsuneishi Holdings, and as Vice Chairman of the America-Japan Society of Tokyo. He is also an advisor to the US-Japan Research Institute and to Ashoka, the pioneer in social entrepreneurship.