Richard A. Debs has served as an American University of Beirut trustee since 1976 and was chairman of the Board of the Trustees from 1994 to June 2005, when he was elected as an emeritus.

He is also an advisory director of Morgan Stanley and a member of its International Advisory Board, having retired as president of Morgan Stanley International in 1987.

Previously he had served as the chief operating officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and as an alternate member of the Federal Open Market Committee. He is the US chairman of the Bretton Woods Commission, past chairman and a member of the New York Stock Exchange International Committee, vice chairman of the US Saudi Arabian Business Council, a member of the Group of Thirty and chairman of its Study Group on Eastern Europe.

He has served from time to time as an advisor to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and on the Russian American Bankers Forum and the Reuters Carnegie Public Policy Series.

He is also chairman emeritus of Carnegie Hall, where he continues to serve on the Executive Committee, and a director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Institute of International Education, Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, and several international business and financial corporations.

He is also a member of the Foreign Policy Association, Overseas Development Council, Economic Club of New York, Japan Society, American Council on Germany, and the Council on Foreign Relations, where he served on the Middle East Economic Strategy Group.

He was a Fulbright Scholar and a Ford Foundation Fellow in Egypt, and holds a PhD from Princeton and an LlB from Harvard Law School as well as an Honorary Doctorate from AUB.