Chief of Strategic Communications

Mr. Mark Laity has been involved with the media, information and latterly Strategic Communications for three decades, both as a journalist, mostly with the BBC, and then as a spokesman and senior manager for NATO at various levels. His experience covers all levels from the political and strategic to the frontlines of major conflicts and peacekeeping missions.

Since 2007 Mark Laity has been the Chief Strategic Communications at SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe). He is the first holder of the post, created in response to the growing importance of information campaigns in military operations. His office has led in the creation of Strategic Communication policy and now oversees its implementation and further development in NATO operations.

This job followed nine months in Afghanistan in 2006-7 as the NATO Spokesman in Kabul and Media Adviser to the ISAF Commander. His tour as spokesman covered the intense media interest generated by NATO/ISAF’s transition from overseeing largely peacekeeping roles to a growing counter-insurgency campaign in the South and East of Afghanistan. In 2008 he completed a second six month tour as NATO Spokesman in Kabul.

Prior to this he was the first ever civilian Chief of Public Information at SHAPE, after working as Special Adviser on Strategic Communications to General James Jones, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

From 2000, Mark Laity was for four years the Special Adviser to the Secretary General of NATO, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, and also NATO’s Deputy Spokesman. He had a wide variety of policy and media roles, including a year as NATO spokesman, and special responsibility for liaison with the military, and oversight of information campaigns on NATO operations. In 2001 he was sent to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as personal adviser to the Macedonian President at a time when the country was on the verge of civil war. When a NATO military force was later deployed he became the Media Adviser to the operation’s commander and civilian spokesman for the successful Operation Essential Harvest.

Mark Laity joined NATO after 22 years in journalism, mostly in BBC radio and television as a producer and reporter. This included, from 1989, 11 years as the BBC’s Defence Correspondent. He reported from the frontlines of most major conflicts of the nineties, but particularly the break-up of Yugoslavia. In 1999 his reporting on the NATO air campaign against the Milosevic regime made him a familiar face worldwide on BBC Television. He had fulfilled a similar analytical role during the Gulf war in 1990-91, when, reporting for BBC Radio, he was based in Saudi Arabia.

He was born in Truro, Cornwall, and has a BA honours degree and an MA from the University of York.

He is also a regular lecturer and teacher on media issues and strategic communications, ranging from lecturing at the NATO Defence College and NATO School to developing and directing a course on media operations for the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Ghana.

Source: NATO

By

L. J. De Rothschild

Senior Editor

NATO Section

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