A leader in public service and foreign affairs

Eric Whitaker has spent a lot of time away from Illinois. After spending the last three decades representing the United States of America in the Foreign Service at the Department of State, however, he will return to his alma mater to receive the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Alumni Achievement Award.

Whitaker was a student at U of I from 1974-1981, during which time he received a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s in health education—while participating in the Marching Illini, basketball band, hockey band, and concert bands. 

His leadership and commitment to public service have left a mark around the globe—literally. Most of his career was spent in Africa, where he most recently served as U.S. ambassador to Niger from 2017 to 2021. He’s also spent time serving in Iraq, South Korea, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Mali, Eritrea, Chad, Uganda, and Sudan.

As his passport filled up, Whitaker’s love for his home state of Illinois grew, and his commitment to the future of the University of Illinois became stronger.

“I think when you live overseas you begin to appreciate our regional differences and you appreciate where you were brought up. I was raised in the land of Lincoln, a state that produced four presidents,” Whitaker said. “Near the large suburb of Aurora, I lived in a small village front of corn and soybean fields, but I could go anywhere in the city of Chicago in an hour. So, I had the best of all worlds.”

Whitaker joined the Peace Corps after graduating from the U of I, and at his first stop in the Philippines he found exactly what he’d been looking for. Whitaker lived in a bamboo hut in the Visayan Islands while teaching high schoolers, training village health workers,  improving open-dug wells, and repairing drainage networks. During training trips to Manila, Whitaker was exposed to the U.S. Foreign Service while visiting the Embassy.

“They had a cafeteria up on the eighth floor, and I recall that several of us would go there. We'd have a steak sandwich, and a hot fudge sundae, and for us that was the life,” Whitaker said. “Then we found out that people in the embassy served by living overseas, representing the United States, and they got paid for it!”

He remembered that experience in the Philippines a few years later, in 1990, while he was working for the City of Lodi, California. He passed the rigorous Foreign Service entrance process, and was offered an opportunity to join.  He and his wife both became part of the Department of State.

“We drove across the country to come to Washington, D.C.,” Whitaker said, “We said at the time, ‘If it doesn't work out, we can always go back.’ Well, it worked out.”

For the next 31 years, Whitaker would represent the U.S. overseas, developing a reputation for leadership.

“[In one] year alone I hosted over 70 senior U.S. government officials to Djibouti, and Ambassador Whitaker was the only one to handwrite a thank you letter to me,” said Hermes Grullon, a U.S. Foreign Service worker who worked with Whitaker in Niger. “He did not need to do this, but this is merely one example of his leadership.”

Peter W. Lord, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for the East Africa, Sudan, and South Sudan Bureau of African Affairs, said Whitaker was greatly appreciated during his career.

“Ambassador Whitaker invested in others, supporting the professional development of everyone he encounters and creating an environment where a diverse array of individuals is able to access opportunity and rise to full potential,” Lord said. “As Ambassador Whitaker's deputy in the Office of East African Affairs, I saw and learned from this dedicated approach firsthand.”

Now retired, Whitaker is dedicating his time to inspiring young Midwesterners to follow in his footsteps. He has started several scholarship funds, including one for students at his former high school, West Aurora High School in Aurora, Illinois, and a support fund for students at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh who serve as interns at the Department of State. In 2021, he established the Whitaker Scholarship at the Center for African Studies at U of I.

“Typically, people who live overseas think of the United States as New York, L.A., and Washington, D.C. They don't often know things about the Midwest other than Chicago,” Whitaker said. “I would like to see more Midwesterners express an interest in the Foreign Service to help diversify it geographically and help the Foreign Service to represent the complex mosaic that we call America.”