Ronald Lauder

Ronald Lauder has served as President of the World Jewish Congress since 2007, making him the highest-ranking elected leader of world Jewry's most prominent international umbrella organization and the primary institutional voice for Jewish communities in more than 100 countries. Born February 26, 1944, in New York City, the younger son of cosmetics empire co-founder Estée Lauder, Ronald Lauder studied at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Sciences Po in Paris, and the University of Brussels. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy under President Reagan from 1983 to 1986, then as U.S. Ambassador to Austria from 1986 to 1987 — the diplomatic posting that permanently redirected his attention toward the decimated Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, which he established in 1987 following his ambassadorship, operates Jewish schools, summer camps, and cultural programs in 14 European countries — the most comprehensive private effort to rebuild Jewish communal life in the countries that were emptied by the Holocaust. Lauder has personally funded the reconstruction of Jewish infrastructure in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic at a level unmatched by any other individual philanthropist. He founded the Neue Galerie New York (the premier museum of German and Austrian art in America), endowed a major collection of Klimt and Schiele works, and successfully recovered looted art from Nazi-era seizures — including Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I," which he arranged to be returned to the Bloch-Bauer heirs. His commitment to Holocaust memory is not rhetorical: he financed and personally championed the renovation of Auschwitz-Birkenau's memorial infrastructure.

As WJC President, Lauder has been a vocal defender of Israel in international forums, directly confronting UN bodies, European leaders, and heads of state on antisemitism and Israel's right of self-defense. His personal relationship with Israeli political leadership across governments — from Netanyahu to those preceding him — gives him direct diplomatic access that most non-governmental actors lack. At Rank 17, Lauder is the Jewish statesman without portfolio: the private citizen who operates with the reach and institutional weight of a head of government, defending Jewish life from Warsaw to Washington.