partner in February 2014. Rae sits as an advisor to Canada's Ecofiscal Commission. Rae was appointed Canada's special envoy to Myanmar in October 2017 and advised Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the Rohingya crisis. He is also a Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. On July 6, 2020, his appointment as Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations was announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Family Rae was born in Ottawa, Ontario. His parents were Lois Esther (George) and Saul Rae, an eminent Canadian career diplomat who had postings in Washington, Geneva, New York, Mexico, and The Hague. Rae's paternal grandparents immigrated from Scotland, and his mother had English ancestry. Rae was raised as an Anglican. As an adult, he found out that his paternal grandfather was Jewish and was from a family of Lithuanian immigrants to Scotland. Rae's elder brother John A. Rae (born 1945) was an executive vice-president and director of Power Corporation and a prominent member of the Liberal Party. He was also an adviser to Jean Chrétien when he was Indian Affairs Minister in 1968, and then again from 1993 until 2003 while Chrétien was prime minister. Rae's younger brother, David, was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1987. Despite a bone marrow transplant from his brother, he died of leukemia in 1989 at age 32. Rae learned of his family's Jewish origins in 1968. The revelation had a strong impact on him: he sought to explore his Jewish culture, dated Jewish girls exclusively and ultimately married a Jewish woman. Upon his marriage to Arlene Perly Rae, Rae agreed to raise three daughters in his wife's Jewish faith. Rae is a member of Holy Blossom Temple, a Reform Jewish congregation in Toronto. His uncle, the late Jackie Rae, was an entertainer and former host of The Jackie Rae Show on CBC and also performed on British television. Early career Rae attended Crichton Street Public School in Ottawa, Horace Mann Public School and Gordon Junior High School in Washington, D.C. (1956–1961), and the International School of Geneva, Switzerland. His first job was a paper route delivering the Washington's Evening Star newspaper, which he later described as "one of the worst newspapers in the history of modern journalism". His customers included Richard Nixon and Estes Kefauver. Rae later joked that Kefauver gave him a $20 tip one Christmas, whereas Pat Nixon only gave him a quarter