Mark Malloch-Brown
Chair of The Observer and ODI Global, and a former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations
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About Mark Malloch-Brown
Mark served as Kofi Annan’s chief of staff, and then as UN Deputy Secretary General, before joining the British government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as minister responsible for Africa, Asia and the UN. Most recently, he was president of the Open Society Foundations, the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice and human rights. Mark Malloch-Brown is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics (LSE), and currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House. Mark has honorary degrees from Michigan State University, Pace University and Walden University (distance learning institution) in the United States, and from the Catholic University in Lima, Peru. He has extensive board experience on both commercial and not for profit boards. He was knighted for his contributions to international affairs, and is currently on leave from the British House of Lords.
Mark Malloch-Brown is a former Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and Deputy UN Secretary-General. Mark Malloch-Brown is currently a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics (LSE), a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, he was knighted for his contributions to international affairs, and is currently on leave from the British House of Lords.
Mark Malloch-Brown has worked to advance human rights, justice, and development for more than four decades in a variety of roles: with the United Nations, the World Bank, and as a British government minister, as well as with a range of civil society groups and businesses. At the United Nations, Mark Malloch-Brown led the global promotion of the UN Millennium Development Goals as head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP). At the UNDP, and previously as vice president of external affairs at the World Bank, he led reform efforts to increase the impact of both organisations. He later served as Kofi Annan’s chief of staff, and then as UN Deputy Secretary General, before joining the British government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as minister responsible for Africa and Asia from 2007 to 2009.
Most recently, he was president of the Open Society Foundations, the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights. Mark Malloch-Brown was knighted for his contributions to international affairs and is currently on leave from the British House of Lords. He is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the LSE’s Marshall Institute, a Distinguished Practitioner at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, an adjunct fellow at Chatham House’s Queen Elizabeth Program, and has been a visiting distinguished fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.
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Geopolitics and the Changing Global Order:
An old order is broken and the new has not emerged. Where is the world headed now? As China becomes the world’s leading trading nation, and Brazil and India lay claim to a global voice, the world is overtaken by a malignant power shift as the US digs in its heels. The rise of Trump is a consequence of American weakness, of the white working class America feeling the pinch of lost jobs and status.
Mark reaches back through his own years on the global frontlines to spell out what this may mean the world of rules and institutions set up in 1945 and encapsulated in the UN Charter. What will this mean for a weakened Europe a vulnerable Gulf, and an Africa undergoing a dizzying demographic change? What will this mean for world peace and trade? Anticipate an engrossing global tour of these issues and their interplay that rests on a lifetime of professional and personal insights.
Global Governance, Technology and the Future of Institutions
Having watched earlier demands that the UN regulate the free press and been at the top of the United Nations during efforts to regulate the internet, Mark describes the mixture of governmental motives, some intended to protect freedom, others to suppress it, that are at play in debates about global regulation of technology and information. But beyond regulation, the very processes of international governance, development and security are going to be transformed: whole models of how countries develop and modernise will be upended by the impact on employment and hence incomes of AI displacing human work, while traditional measures of military strength are being upset by new asymmetric tools of war, notably drones.
Drawing on decades of experience across UN humanitarian, peacekeeping, and development work, Mark’s account combines the authority of someone who has shaped the international system with the modesty of someone repeatedly surprised by technology’s unpredictability, making him uniquely placed to explore what AI means for global stability, governance, and the billions of people whose lives it will quietly but profoundly reshape.
Inside Stories from Global Leadership
Mark shares candid stories from his career on the world’s frontlines, on how global leaders actually negotiate, make decisions and manage crises. Whether recounting his experiences as a young journalist covering Thatcher, a consultant to democratic leaders battling for power in Latin America and the Philippines, or his years working at the elbow of Kofi Annan, George Soros and Gordon Brown, his insights bring complex dynamics to life and forecast outcomes of our current geopolitical upheavals.
With a detached journalistic eye, Mark combines a fresh forward-looking appetite for the future, together with a past of having been there in the room, where it happened, for a half century of monumental global change. Whether motivating a corporate audience or entertaining an after dinner one, his mix of reminiscence, humour, and wisdom is compelling.
Client Feedback
"Highly engaging, Mark brought depth and perspective to the forum. A real highlight."
BCG
