In a 30 year career at the United Nations, I have served successive Secretaries-General as Policy Planning Director with responsibility for strategic thinking on emerging challenges, the geopolitical landscape and the future of international cooperation. Most recently, as Director of the Summit of the Future, I conceived and led the effort to negotiate the historic Pact for the Future - the first global agreement on major issues such as governing Artificial Intelligence, managing the risks and opportunities of new technologies, digital cooperation, international financial architecture reform, and acting for future generations. The Pact is also the first agreement in decades on nuclear disarmament, outer space governance, and Security Council reform. I worked closely with Member States to support the Pact negotiations and drafted and coordinated the major substantive inputs to the process including the seminal Common Agenda report. I also managed the diplomatic and public outreach on the goals of the Summit. Prior to the Summit, I led and coordinated many of the Secretary General’s signature initiatives, including COVID-19 policy, the Call to Action on Human Rights, the development and rollout of the UN's primary crisis prevention review mechanism, the RMRs, the Secretary-General’s hate speech strategy, the initiative on cholera in Haiti, and countless other projects requiring the personal engagement of the Secretary-General. Earlier in my career, I set up and ran the UN Mediation Support Unit, aiding peace processes around the world; played a key role in major UN reform efforts in the 2000s, in particular the 2005 World Summit; served as a crisis policy specialist at UNDP, a programme officer in the office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, a Security Council delegate for the European Union, and a Human Rights specialist for the Permanent Mission of Ireland to the United Nations. Beyond the UN, I have worked in think tanks such as the International Peace Institute, the US Institute of Peace, and the Brookings Institution, been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University and an adjunct professor at Columbia University, and have lectured and published widely on global issues and geopolitics. I received my BA (First Class Hons) in European studies from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, where I was also a Foundation Scholar, and my MSC Master’s degree (with distinction) in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.