Marie Yovanovitch to share service experience, Ukraine knowledge during Drake public lecture

Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, will give a public lecture in Des Moines at the end of October.

Yovanovitch is coming to Des Moines as part of Drake University's annual Martin Bucksbaum Distinguished Lecture Series. The lecture will take place on Oct. 27 at 7 p.m. at Drake University's Knapp Center, located at 2525 Forest Ave. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Yovanovitch will speak to her recently published memoir, "Lessons from the Edge," and her insights on the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, according to a press release from Drake University. The talk will be moderated by Eric Shimp, a 1993 Drake graduate and the current Vice President of International Government Relations at Principal Financial Group, according to Jarad Bernstein, a spokesperson for Drake.

Yovanovitch served 33 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, serving three times as a U.S. Ambassador, first to the Kyrgyz Republic from 2005 to 2008, then in the Republic of Armenia from 2008 to 2011 and lastly in Ukraine from 2016 to 2019. After retiring from the Foreign Service in 2020, Yovanovitch took on roles as a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a non-Resident Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. 

Yovanovitch's long and storied career in the U.S. Foreign Service has taken her around the world, from Moscow and London to Ottawa and Mogadishu. She also served as the Deputy Director of the U.S. State Department's Russia Desk and was named the Deputy Chief in Ukraine.

Yovanovitch is a child of parents who survived Soviet and Nazi terror, which she wrote in a 2020 Washington Post Op-Ed motivated her to make the preservation of democracy a central mission of her time in the Foreign Service.

Yovanovitch rose to public attention in 2019, after she was recalled from her post as Ambassador to Ukraine and became a key witness in the Trump impeachment hearings examining then-President Donald Trump's efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate then-Democratic rival Joe Biden.

She writes of her commitments to democracy and of the scrutiny she endured during that time in her New York Times bestselling memoir "Lessons from the Edge."

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There will be a book signing after the event, Bernstein said.

Francesca Block is a breaking news reporter at the Des Moines Register. Reach her at FBlock@registermedia.com or on Twitter at @francescablock3.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Drake University to host Marie Yovanovitch for October lecture