Director, Strategic Foresight Initiative, Atlantic Council

Mathew J. Burrows

Mathew Burrows serves as director of the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Foresight Initiative. He is the author of The Future Declassified: Megatrends that Will Undo the World Unless We Take Action (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2014).

In 2013, Burrows retired from a 28-year career in the CIA and State Department, the last ten being spent at the National Intelligence Council (NIC). In 2007 he was appointed director of the analysis and production staff, and was responsible for managing a staff of senior analysts and production technicians who guide and shepherd all NIC products from inception to dissemination. He was the principal drafter for the NIC publication “Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds,” which received widespread praise in the international media. He also drafted two earlier editions of the report.

Burrows joined the CIA in 1986, serving as analyst for the Directorate of Intelligence and covering Western Europe, including the development of European institutions such as the European Union. From 1998 to 1999 he was the first holder of the Intelligence Community Fellowship and served at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Other previous positions included assignments as special assistant to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke (1999-2001) and deputy national security advisor to U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill (2001-2).

Burrows graduated from Wesleyan University in 1976 and received a Ph.D. in European history from Cambridge University, England in 1983.