Anthony Lake

William Anthony Kirsopp Lake, born in New York in 1939 and educated at Harvard, Cambridge and Princeton, was United States National Security Advisor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997 and is credited as one of the architects of the policy that ended the Bosnian War. He later held the chair of Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, and from 2010 to 2017 he was the sixth executive director of UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency.

Raised in the Congregational Church and first converting to the Episcopal Church, he said he had long been drawn to Judaism and had come to feel strongly that he wanted to be part of that community; he studied for a full year with Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a former United States Navy chaplain, and converted to Judaism in 2005, the year he married Julie Katzman, whose faith he credits with prompting him to look into his attraction more fully.

He tells with amusement that others had counted him Jewish long before: in 1997 a press report wrongly described Clinton's entire national security team as Jewish, after which he was added to the White House list for the Hanukkah party — invitations he was delighted to accept.