Rory Stewart

Rory Stewart is a professor in the practice of grand strategy at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Most recently, he was the president of GiveDirectly. Stewart was previously the UK secretary of state for international development, a member of the National Security Council, minister of state for Africa, Middle East, and Asia, minister of state for prisons and probations, minister for the environment, and chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. He founded and ran the Turquoise Mountain foundation in Afghanistan and was the director of the Carr Centre and the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Stewart is the co-presenter of the UK’s leading podcast, The Rest is Politics, has written five books, including three international bestsellers, presented three BBC television documentaries, and written numerous articles in journals including the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his work in Iraq and has been awarded several international medals and prizes. He holds two honorary doctorates.