Mark Malloch Brown

George Mark Malloch Brown, Baron Malloch-Brown (born 16 September 1953) is a British diplomat, communications consultant, journalist and former politician serving as president of Open Society Foundations since 2021, having previously served as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations under Kofi Annan from April to December 2006.

Malloch Brown was born in September 1953 in Marylebone to an exiled South African diplomat.

He was educated at Marlborough College, and earned a First Class Honours Degree in History from Magdalene College, Cambridge and a master's degree in political science from the University of Michigan.

He was political correspondent for The Economist between 1977 and 1979 and then worked for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1979 to 1983.

Malloch Brown was the political correspondent at The Economist between 1977 and 1979.

Following this he worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1979 to 1983, where he worked for Kofi Annan, and was stationed in Thailand (1979 to 1981) where he was in charge of field operations for Cambodian refugees and supervised the construction of camps at Sa Kaeo and Khao-I-Dang.

In this period the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was awarded the 1981 Nobel Peace Prize, the second time it had been awarded the prize.

In 1983, he returned to The Economist as the founding editor of the Economist Development Report, a position he retained until 1986.

Malloch Brown contemplated running for the Social Democratic Party at the 1983 United Kingdom general election but was not selected as a candidate.

Malloch Brown was the lead international partner at the US-based Sawyer-Miller Group communications consultancy from 1986 to 1994; he ultimately co-owned the Group with three other partners.

The Group was among the first communication consultants to use US-style election campaign methods for foreign governments, companies, and public policy debates.

Malloch Brown "worked extensively on privatisation and other economic reform issues with leaders in Eastern Europe and Russia".

Malloch Brown focused much of his public relations energies on advising politicians in Latin America.

He advised Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada's 1989 presidential campaign in Bolivia.

In Peru, he assisted Mario Vargas Llosa with his 1990 presidential campaign, though Vargas Llosa did not heed his advice and lost to Alberto Fujimori despite having an initial lead in polls.

In Chile, Malloch Brown advised the opposition in its successful challenge to former dictator Augusto Pinochet.

In Colombia, he advised the government on how to shed "its image as the political wing of the Medellin cartel"

In the Philippines, Malloch Brown worked with Corazon Aquino in the campaign against Ferdinand Marcos.

Malloch Brown wrote Aquino's victory speech which she recited days before voting results were to be released since her campaign assumed that Marcos claim victory as well.

He stated that an "outstanding accomplishment during the Cory campaign was to produce an exit poll that indicated that she had won".

After acting as lead international partner at American public relations firm Sawyer-Miller, he was development specialist at the World Bank from 1994 to 1999, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme from 1999 to 2005 and United Nations Deputy Secretary-General from April to December 2006.

In 1994, Malloch Brown joined the World Bank as Vice-President for External Affairs, which included responsibility for relations with the United Nations.

He used his experience to good effect at the bank, helping to transform its reputation: "under his guidance, the bank blitzed opinion-makers with full-page newspaper advertisements and a television campaign to change perceptions of it as an arrogant institution unwilling to heed outsiders. To his credit, the institution gradually gained a reputation as a 'listening bank', unlike its more aloof sister institution, the International Monetary Fund."

Malloch Brown moved back to the United Nations as Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in July 1999, remaining in this position until August 2005.

He led the UN's creation of the Millennium Development Goals which were adopted at the UN Millennium Summit in December 2000, later recounting the draft had gone to the printers without an environmental goal when Malloch Brown passed the head of the UN environment programme in a corridor, leading to the rapid addition of MDG number 7.

While serving as United Nations Development Programme Administrator, Malloch Brown spoke beside George Soros in 2002 suggesting that United Nations and Soros's Open Society Institute, as well as other organizations, work together to fund humanitarian functions.

In late 2002, Malloch Brown offered to assist talks between Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian government and the opposition, who was seeking to begin the process of attempting to recall Chávez a year later.

His UNDP observers were chosen by Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) to supervise the signature collection for the 2004 Venezuela recall.

In this role Malloch Brown co-ordinated the UN's response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

In January 2005 he was appointed Chef de Cabinet to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whilst retaining his position as Administrator of UNDP for much of 2005.

Malloch Brown was listed 7th in the Leaders and Revolutionaries section of the Time 100 in 2005.

Malloch Brown succeeded Louise Fréchette as United Nations Deputy Secretary-General on 1 April 2006, retaining the position until December 2006.

In 2006, he was named a visiting fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and announced plans to focus on writing a book on changing leadership in a globalised world while in residence during the spring semester.

Malloch Brown publicly defended handling of the Oil-for-Food Programme by the UN in general, and Kofi Annan in particular.

A former member of the Labour Party, he served as Minister of State for Africa and the United Nations in the Brown government from 2007 to 2009.

Born in Marylebone, Malloch Brown studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge and the University of Michigan.

Malloch Brown joined the government of Gordon Brown in 2007 at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and was elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer.

After stepping down from the government in 2009 due to family and personal reasons, he was appointed chairman of global affairs for FTI Consulting a year later.

In 2014, he was appointed chairman of the board of directors of election technology manufacturer Smartmatic's holding company.

In December 2020, he was chosen to serve as president of Open Society Foundations starting in January 2021.