Since joining the British Foreign Service in 1995, Gerard Russell headed one of Britain’s diplomatic missions (as Consul General in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) and two of its largest political teams in embassies overseas – in Baghdad and Kabul. Between 2001 and 2003, he designed and was head of the Islamic Media Unit, the United Kingdom’s initiative to reach out to opinion in the Arab and broader Islamic world. After working on European and Iraq policy in London, he went to Baghdad in 2005 as an adviser to the Iraqi prime minister. He then became head of the British Embassy’s political team in Baghdad, served in Saudi Arabia and became head of the British Embassy’s political team in Kabul. He returned to Kabul in 2009 as a senior staffer at the United Nations mission. He left the UN and the British government in 2009 to take up a Research Fellowship at the Carr Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School for Government.