Career
After graduation, Lewis went to work as an attorney in the U.S. Justice Department and later in the Office of Compliance in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He was an associate director and country director for the Peace Corps in Nigeria and Uganda from 1966 to 1969.
Lewis was a legislative assistant to Senator Edward Brooke and Delegate Walter E. Fauntroy. He led Marion Barry's transition team in 1978 and his financial committee in 1982.
He joined The Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company in 1973 as a public affairs manager, becoming its chief executive officer in 1990. In 1988, Lewis served a one-year term as president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, and began a term as president of the newly formed City National Bank of Washington, which eventually closed in 1993.
In 1993, Lewis became president and chief executive officer of National Public Radio. During his tenure, he served for three years on the board of Apple Computer, citing "pressing time demands" as the reason for leaving in 1997. He resigned from NPR in 1998.
Lewis was also a member of the board of directors of Black Entertainment Television, and has served on the board of Colgate-Palmolive, Halliburton and Eastman Kodak.
U.S. President Bill Clinton named Lewis the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, a post he served from 1999 to 2001. He was sworn in by federal judge John Edwards Conway, a law-school classmate. Lewis and his wife moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he started a consultancy, Lewis & Associates. In 2006, he was named a senior fellow at New Mexico State University. The following year, he was named as the founding director of New Mexico State University's International Relations Institute.
Read more about this topic: Delano Lewis
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