Jonathan Powell is an expert on conflict resolution and negotiation strategy with 35 years’ experience. He is CEO of Inter Mediate, the NGO he established in 2011. Jonathan was Tony Blair’s chief of staff from 1995 to 2007. He was the only senior adviser to stay with Blair from his... Read more
Jonathan Powell is an expert on conflict resolution and negotiation strategy with 35 years’ experience. He is CEO of Inter Mediate, the NGO he established in 2011.
Jonathan was Tony Blair’s chief of staff from 1995 to 2007. He was the only senior adviser to stay with Blair from his election as leader of the Labour Party until he left No 10 Downing Street.
Prior to working for Blair, Jonathan was a British diplomat from 1979 to 1994, working on the negotiations with the Chinese on the return of Hong Kong in the early 1980s, the CSCE negotiations with the former Soviet Union and the CDE arms control talks in the mid-1980s and the 2 plus 4 negotiations on German unification in the late 1980s.
Jonathan was the political officer in the British Embassy in Washington from 1991 to 1994 and attached himself to Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaign in 1991 and predicted his victory. He introduced Tony Blair to Bill Clinton and his team after his victory in 1993.
While in Downing Street Jonathan was also the chief British negotiator on Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007. He helped lead the talks to a successful conclusion ending centuries of conflict on the island of Ireland.
From 2006 to 2011 Jonathan worked on the negotiations between the Spanish government and ETA, the Basque terrorist group, which ended the fifty-year armed conflict with the Aiete declaration in San Sebastián in 2011.
In 2011 Jonathan established the not-for-profit Inter Mediate to work on armed conflicts around the world. Inter Mediate has served as advisers to President Santos in Colombia on the negotiations with the FARC and the ELN from 2011-2018. The negotiations with the FARC successfully concluded with a peace agreement that ended 50 years of conflict which caused nearly 250,000 deaths.
Jonathan was appointed Prime Minister David Cameron’s special envoy for Libya from April 2014 – July 2016.
Inter Mediate have also advised Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma on the peace negotiations there with the Tatmadaw (Burmese army) and seventeen ethnic armed groups who have been at war for sixty years. Inter Mediate operates discreetly and deniably with ten other projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Its work is funded by neutral governments.
Jonathan was a member of the board of Save the Children International until July 2019.
Jonathan was a managing director at Morgan Stanley from 2008-9.
On 22 March 2017, Jonathan was awarded the title of Honorary Professor at The Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast.
On 6 April 2023, Jonathan was awarded the title of Honorary Degree, Doctor in Laws, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin. Jonathan has published three books: ‘Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland’, ‘The New Machiavelli, How to Wield Power in the Modern World’, and ‘Talking to Terrorists, How to End Armed Conflict’.