Speaking in Tallinn, July 2019
Alexander Evans O.B.E. is a British diplomat and author. He was Director Cyber at the Foreign Office from 2018-2020, which included being the U.K.'s chief bilateral and multilateral cyber negotiator and serving on the United Nations Group of Government Experts on Cyber.
Prior to that he was Britain's Deputy High Commissioner to India from 2015-2018, and Acting High Commissioner from November 2015 to March 2016. He formerly led the United Nations Security Council expert team on Daesh, Al Qaida and the Taliban, appointed by Ban Ki-moon. He previously taught international relations as a senior fellow at Yale's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. In 2012 he led an Asia Society review of U.S. South Asia policy. He is a former Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress, and has worked at the Department of State as a senior advisor, first to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and then to Ambassador Marc Grossman, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Before working for the U.S. government Alexander served as a British diplomat in Islamabad and New Delhi and as a member of the Policy Planning Staff, London.
Prior to the British diplomatic service Alexander was research director at Policy Exchange and an associate fellow at Chatham House. Alexander has worked for the U.N. in Afghanistan in 2002, as an adjunct fellow at the Stimson Center, Washington DC, and as a political adviser and for the O.S.C.E. in Northern Macedonia. He was director of studies of a financial think-tank, the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, worked in the private office of the President of the General Medical Council, and began his career at in consulting at Adam Smith International.
Alexander has published extensively on international affairs, contributing to books and journals including Foreign Affairs. He has also contributed to The Economist and The Banker and commented for BBC Television and CNN. He previously held fellowships at Yale University (World Fellow, and returning later as a Senior Fellow), Nuffield College Oxford (Gwilym Gibbon Fellow) and King's College London (Visiting Senior Research Fellow). He has a Ph.D. in politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) in the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours List.
