Edward Mortimer

Edward Mortimer CMG is Senior Vice-President and Chief Programme Officer at the Salzburg Global Seminar and chair of the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice. From 1998 to 2006 he served as chief speechwriter and (from 2001) as director of communications to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He has spent much of his career as a journalist, first with The Times of London, where he developed an expertise in Middle East affairs, and later with the Financial Times, where from 1987 to 1998 he was the main commentator and columnist on foreign affairs.

Mr. Mortimer has also served as a fellow and/or faculty at several institutions, including Oxford University (where he was a Fellow of All Souls College), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the International Institute of Strategic Studies, and (as Honorary Professor) the University of Warwick; and on the governing bodies of several non-governmental organisations, including Chatham House, the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, the John Stuart Mill Institute, the 21st Century Trust, Minority Rights Group International, the Agence France-Presse Foundation and the Children’s Radio Foundation.