Priscilla Clapp

Priscilla Clapp is a retired Minister-Counselor in the U.S. Foreign Service and a senior advisor to Asia Society, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and other NGOs focused on Myanmar.

During her 30-year career with the U.S. Government, she served as Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma (1999–2002), Deputy Chief of Mission in the U.S. Embassy in South Africa (1993–96), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Refugee Programs (1989–93), Deputy Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow (1986–88), and Chief of Political-Military Affairs in the U.S. Embassy in Japan (1981–85). She also worked on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, in its East Asian, Political Military, and International Organizations Bureaus, and with the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Prior to government service, Ms. Clapp spent 10 years in foreign policy and arms control research, under contract to the MIT Center for International Studies and as a research associate at the Brookings Institution. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Her books include: with Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Brookings, 2006); with I.M. Destler et al., Managing an Alliance: the Politics of U.S.-Japanese Relations (Brookings, 1976); with Morton Halperin, U.S.-Japanese Relations in the 1970’s (Harvard, 1974). She is also the author of numerous chapters, articles and other publications on foreign policy, and has co-authored multiple Asia Society reports on Myanmar, including Sustaining Myanmar’s Transition: Ten Critical Challenges and Advancing Myanmar’s Transition: A Way Forward for U.S. Policy.