Robert Orr (executive)
Robert "Skipp" Orr is the former President of Boeing Japan, and former Vice President of Motorola's European Affairs Division. At Motorola he also served as Vice President and Director of Government Relations, and also Government Relations Director for Nippon Motorola in Tokyo. In November 2006, Boeing announced that Orr was retiring as President effective March 2007.
Orr graduated from Florida Atlantic University in 1976 with a bachelor's degree in history. He subsequently earned a master's degree in government from Georgetown University, and his doctorate in political science from Tokyo University. In addition to the corporate world, he spent many years in academia and the United States Government. From 1985 to 1993, he was a professor of Political Science at Temple University Japan. He also ran the Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies and the Stanford Center for Technology and Innovation at the Stanford Japan Center in Kyoto for two years. His book, The Emergence of Japan’s Foreign Aid Power won the 1991 Ohira Prize for best book on the Asia Pacific. Orr’s career began in 1976 when he served for two years as Legislative Assistant to Congressman Paul G. Rogers, a 12 term member of the US House of Representatives. Between 1978 and 1981 he served on the House Foreign Affairs Asia Subcommittee staff seconded from the Select Committee on Narcotics. In 1981, he was appointed as Special Assistant to the Assistant Administrator of Asia in the US Agency for International Development in the Department of State. He lived in Japan for over 16 years. He is fluent in Japanese and German and has intermediate French.
Orr is chairman of the Panasonic Foundation in the U.S. and was a major fundraiser for the Obama 2008 presidential campaign. In 2010, he was appointed by President Obama to serve as executive director of the Manila-based Asian Development Bank, with the rank of ambassador.
