Darryl Norman Johnson Assumes Duties as New Director of AIT Taipei

PR9637E | Date: 1996-08-02

Darryl N. Johnson arrived in Taipei August 1, 1996, to assume his duties as the new Director of the American Institute in Taiwan. Prior to joining AIT, Mr. Johnson was a career Foreign Service officer with extensive experience in East European and Asian affairs. Before coming to Taiwan, he served on the Bosnia Task Force in Washington and as Charge of the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo in April 1996. Before that, he was Senior Advisor to Madeline Albright, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and before that, was Deputy Coordinator for Assistance to the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union.

Mr. Johnson served as the first American Ambassador to the Republic of Lithuania, having arrived in Vilnius in September, 1991, to open the first post-World War II U.S. Mission in that country. Prior to that, he served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, Poland (1988-91), and before that in Beijing (1984-87), Moscow (1974-77), Hong Kong (1969-73), and Bombay (1966-67). In addition, he served in the Department of State in Washington, D.C., as Officer-in-Charge of Yugoslav Affairs (1977-79), Officer-in-Charge of People's Republic of China Affairs (1979-81), as a Pearson Fellow in the Office of Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI) (1981-82), and as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs (1982-84). In the latter position, his responsibilities included East European, Soviet, and East Asian/Pacific Affairs during the tenure of the then Under Secretary, Lawrence Eagleburger.

Mr. Johnson was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1938, and grew up in suburban Seattle, Washington. He attended public schools there, graduating in 1956, and went on to attend the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, and the University of Washington in Seattle, from which he received his BA (Cum Laude) in English Literature in 1960.

At the University of Washington he was a member of the academic honor societies for Military Science, Music and Literature, and was admitted to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1960. Following graduation he attended the University of Minnesota and Princeton University and worked several months at the Boeing Company in Seattle during and after his university studies. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand (1962-65) before joining the Foreign Service.

Mr. Johnson is the father of one daughter and two sons, all of whom live and work in the Washington, D.C., area. He is married to the former Kathleen Desa Forance. His languages are Chinese (Mandarin), Polish, Russian, Thai and Lithuanian.