Director & Co-Founder, European Council on Foreign Relations 

Mark Leonard is a leading analyst and commentator on international affairs, geopolitics and geoeconomics. He is the Director and Co-Founder of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a council of 300 European leaders including serving and former presidents, prime ministers, economics and foreign ministers, the first pan-European think tank. His expertise and interests include geopolitics and geoeconomics, China, EU politics and institutions.

Previously he worked as director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform and as director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a think tank he founded at the age of 24 under the patronage of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the 1990s, Leonard worked for the think tank Demos where his Britain™ report was credited with launching Cool Britannia. Mark has spent time in Washington, D.C. as a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and in Beijing as a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences.

He was Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geoeconomics until 2016. Honoured as a “Young Global Leader” of the World Economic Forum, he spends a lot of time helping governments, companies, and international organisations make sense of the big geo-political trends of the twenty-first century. He is a regular speaker and prolific writer and commentator on global issues, the future of Europe, China’s internal politics, and the practice of diplomacy and business in a networked world.

Session: Opening General Session, Thursday, July 18 at 9:15 a.m.

Sponsored by:

Consultant Surgeon, Founder of the David Nott Foundation

David Nott gained his medical degree from Manchester University and in 1992 gained his FRCS from the Royal College of Surgeons of England to become a Consultant Surgeon. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Birthday Honours. In 2016 he received the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award and the Pride of Britain Award.

He has been a Consultant Surgeon at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for 23 years where he specialises in general surgery. Mr Nott also performs vascular and trauma surgery at St Mary’s Hospital and cancer surgery at the Royal Marsden Hospital. David is an authority in laparoscopic surgery and was the first surgeon to combine laparoscopic and vascular surgery.

For the past twenty three years David has taken unpaid leave each year to work for the aid agencies Médecins Sans Frontières, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Syria Relief. He has provided surgical treatment to the victims of conflict and catastrophe in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Chad, Darfur, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Central African Republic, Gaza and Nepal.

As well as treating victims of conflict and catastrophe and raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for charitable causes, David teaches advanced surgical skills to local medics and surgeons when he is abroad. In London, he teaches the Definitive Surgical Trauma Skills (DSTS) and Surgical Training for the Austere Environment (STAE) courses at the Royal College of Surgeons.

In 2015 David established the David Nott Foundation with his wife Elly. The Foundation supports surgeons to develop their operating skills for warzones and austere environments.

Session: Closing General Session, Friday, July 19 at 11:00 a.m.