Mark Leonard is Executive Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, but this isn’t his first foray into international affairs. He’s held high-level positions at the Centre for European Reform and the Foreign Policy Centre. The latter he founded with the help of Tony Blair at the age of 24. He also attended the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences in Beijing as a visiting scholar.

Mark has written for almost every publication known to man including Time, Newsweek, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, Prospect, The Spectator, New Statesman, Foreign Policy, The Washington Quarterly, Country Life, Arena, The Mirror, The Express, The Sun, The Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Wired. He’s also written two books Why Europe will run the 21st Century and What does China think?

His smarts have had him seen as both “one of the most influential men in Tony Blair’s Britain,” and “an insufferable wunderkind.” At 24 in 1998, British captains of industry were already courting him. Mark spent his childhood in Belgium, and became as The Independent referred to it “a pampered member of the young European elite.”

Don’t let this fool you though. Mark Leonard is a determined current affairs analyst, and although raised in Belgium to speak three languages, French, German and English his accent remains extraordinarily Cockney. He was schooled at Caius College, Cambridge, and straight from there started his meteoric rise. Although in 1998 at the age of 24 he still didn’t know how to drive, we can pray this fact has changed over the past 12 years.

Mark now lives in Chalk Farm with his wife Gabrielle Calver and travels regularly around America, the Middle East, China, the former Soviet bloc and the European Union.

Visit Mark’s Website or find him on Youtube.

European Council on Foreign Relations

ECFR on Youtube