Arthur J. Collingsworth (February 28, 1944 – July 23, 2013) was an American United Nations official, international student exchange executive, consultant on international fund raising and real estate investor. He lived in the United States, Japan, United Kingdom, Czech Republic and Germany.
Life
Collingsworth was born on February 28, 1944, in Jackson, Michigan. He grew up and attended public schools in Tecumseh, Michigan, where he was a student leader.
At the age of fourteen he wrote a letter to President Juscelino Kubitschek of Brazil that resulted in his appointment as Brazilian Government Trade Bureau Representative to Michigan and Ohio. The media described him as the "world's youngest diplomat" and the United States Information Agency made a film about him called A Midwestern Boy Writes to the President of Brazil. In recognition of his promotional efforts President Kubitschek invited him to visit Brazil for a month in 1960.
In 1962 he entered the University of Michigan as a Regents Alumni Scholarship recipient and received a B.A. in Political Science in 1967. He was active in a number of organizations and took a year to serve on the staff of his local congressman. He also spent a summer doing research work for the Foreign Affairs Research Division of the House Republican Conference in Washington, D.C., and wrote a syndicated column entitled "Our Man in Washington" for a group of Michigan newspapers.
In the summer of 1965 he spent several months in South Vietnam as a student leader observer on a grant from an American organization. In the summer of 1966 he made his second trip around the world as chairman of a delegation of national college Republican leaders. The group met with a number of senior political and government leaders and prepared a report for selected Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee upon their return. In 1967 Collingsworth established the Niels Hansen Memorial Foundation and has served as its Chairman since then.
In the autumn of 1967 he entered the Georgetown University Graduate School. He held an Earhart Foundation Fellowship and served as a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He received his M.A. in Government (international relations) in 1971. While a Fellow at CSIS he helped to author Trading with Communist Countries: A Reference Manual, which was published by the Center in January 1968. He work for a year on the Presidential campaign staff of Richard Nixon and sthen served on the White House Transition staff.
Collingsworth was named Director of Public Affairs and Development of the YFU Teenage Student Exchange Program of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1969. YFU was one of the world's two largest student exchange organizations. In 1975 he was named Vice President and held this position until August 1982. During his tenure he raised more than $20 million for the organization and pioneered fund raising in Japan where he generated more than $10 million from government and private sources. He conceived and funded the Japan–U.S. Senate Student Exchange Program that was followed by the Bundestag–Congress Student Exchange Program with Germany and the Finland–U.S. Senate Student Exchange Program. He subsequently served as a Trustee and Consultant to YFU for another twelve years.
In September 1982, Collingsworth joined the staff of the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo as their Senior Resource Development Officer. The UNU is a United Nations agency with a mandate for research, training and dissemination of information on areas of interest to the UN. He raised $30 million plus the provision of physical facilities from the Government of Finland for the establishment of the UNU's first research and training center, the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) in Helsinki, Finland. In April 1985 he was named Director of the United Nations University Office in Europe located and held this post in London until late 1988.
In December 1984, the President of Finland conferred the Order of the White Rose, Knight 1st Class, on Collingsworth. He was the youngest non-Finn to have received this honor. He is also a Commander of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, a member of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco and of the Metropolitan Club of Washington, DC.