Maurice Tempelsman

Lazare Kaplan International, Inc.

Maurice Tempelsman is senior partner at the firm of Leon Tempelsman & Son, a company active in mining, investments and business development and minerals trading in Europe, Russia, Africa, Latin America, Canada and the Far East. He is also chairman of the board of directors of Lazare Kaplan International Inc., one of the nation's foremost diamond houses. He serves on the international advisory council of the American Stock Exchange and is a director of the Business Council for International Understanding.

Mr. Tempelsman is a member of the board of trustees of the African-American Institute (and immediate past chairman) and serves on the boards of directors of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the Center for National Policy. He is a member of the corporation of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and chairman of the International Advisory Council of the Harvard AIDS Institute.

Mr. Tempelsman is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is affiliated with the Department of Classical Art of the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston, Massachusetts.

He has served on several presidential commissions, including the president's Commission for the Observance of Human Rights, the Citizen's Advisory Board of Youth Opportunities, the National Highway Safety Advisory Committee and was appointed by Governor Carey to the New York Council on International Business. Mr. Tempelsman was appointed by former President Bill Clinton as director and elected treasurer of the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund. The secretary of commerce appointed him a member of the U.S.-South Africa Business Development Committee.

Born in Belgium in 1929, Mr. Tempelsman came to the United States as a child. He attended New York public schools and New York University. He has three children. Mr. Tempelsman is fluent in several languages, and his interests are in the fields of history, archaeology and sailing.