Rory Stewart

Rory Stewart was a member of the British Parliament for almost a decade. During that time he served as secretary of state for international development, prisons minister, minister for Africa, development minister for the Middle East and Asia, and minister for the environment. He also ran against Boris Johnson for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Earlier in his career he served briefly as an infantry officer and then as a diplomat for the British government in Indonesia, the Balkans, and Iraq. He founded and ran the Turquoise Mountain foundation in Afghanistan and was the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. From 2000 to 2002 he traveled six thousand miles on foot across Asia, including Afghanistan. Stewart has written four books: The Places in Between, The Prince of the Marshes, Can Intervention Work? (coauthor), and The Marches. He is a visiting Fellow at Yale Jackson School, hosts The Rest Is Politics podcast with Alastair Campbell and is the president of the nonprofit GiveDirectly.