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Counsellor, Global Challenges, British Embassy Tokyo
Policy Fellow, Centre for Science and Policy
Joe Young is a Diplomat for the FCDO, currently posted at the British Embassy Tokyo where he is a Counsellor within the Economic Diplomacy Directorate. He heads a team working on priority Global Challenges with a focus on Asia. Portfolios include international economics, international development, energy and climate and global health. He previously led the economic statecraft team, which seeks to leverage economic tools and build alliances to support foreign policy and multilateral objectives. In recent years he has worked at the heart of the UK’s G7 and COP26 presidencies where he was responsible for key areas of policy development, diplomatic strategy and negotiations. Recent portfolios have included macro-economy, climate-energy, food-agriculture, digital-technology, infrastructure-development, trade-supply chains and global health. In these roles he has covered both G7 industrialised economies and G20 emerging markets, including representing at various G7 and G20 summits. His roles have meant bringing together policy and diplomatic responsibilities for both thematic and geographic areas: working on the design of effective public policy and on influencing international partners to cooperate on these. Prior to this he spent a number of years in FCDO, both at Embassies and in Whitehall. He graduated from Downing College, Cambridge, where he topped his course, focusing on the geopolitics of globalisation, patterns of international economic development and the political ecology of 21C environmental change.