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Mark Leonard is Executive Director the first pan-European think-tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations (www.ecfr.eu). It was launched in late 2007 with backing from the Soros Foundations Network, Fride, the Communitas Foundation, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, and the Unicredit Group.
His first book, "Why Europe will run the 21st Century", published in the UK by 4th Estate in February 2005, has been translated into 17 languages. His second book "What does China think?" will be published later in the year.
Mark writes and broadcasts regularly on international affairs – assignments which have led him to seek out barbecues in Texas, prisoners in Egypt and cutting-edge architecture in China. His work has appeared in publications including The Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, Prospect, The Spectator, New Statesman, Foreign Policy, The Washington Quarterly, Country Life, Arena, The Mirror, The Express, and The Sun.
Mark also acts an adviser to companies and governments on China, Middle East Reform, the future of Europe and Public Diplomacy; occassionally collaborating with the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to produce work for clients ranging from the European Commission to Prada.
Mark has spent time in Washington as a transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, in Beijing as a visiting scholar of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Brussels as a trainee in the legal service of the European Council.
Previously Mark was Director of Foreign Policy at the London-based Centre for European Reform. For six years before that, Mark was Director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a think-tank he helped found at the age of 24, under the patronage of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Mark has also worked as a researcher for Demos, where he ran the Europe programme, as well as writing the Britain ™ report which is credited with launching "Cool Britannia".
Mark travels regularly around America, the Middle East, China, the former Soviet bloc and the European Union, and as as child, he lived in Brussels for 12 years, where he picked up fluent French and German.
He lives in Chalk Farm with his wife Gabrielle Calver.
He can be contacted at mark.leonard@ecfr.eu