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My career has taken me across borders as much as my life has. I was born in Colombia, raised in Sweden, and educated between Sweden, Spain, Scotland, and Belgium before beginning my professional life in Brussels. I started at the European Parliament as a trainee to a Swedish MEP in 2014, worked for five years at Amazon covering the European Commission's Digital Single Market agenda, and joined Netflix in 2020 as Senior Manager of Public Policy. Since August 2025, I have been Acting Head of Office for Global Affairs EU, overseeing Netflix's engagement with the European Institutions across competition, trade, audiovisual, digital, AI, and copyright policy. What connects each of these steps is not the sector or the employer but the fact that all of them have required moving fluently between languages, legal cultures, and political traditions. My time at the 黑料网 shaped much of my thinking and led me to try a path I had not intended. The Master of Arts in International Relations and History was, in the Scottish tradition, deliberately broad, which taught me early on that no single discipline holds the whole of any question worth asking. I read history alongside international relations, political theory alongside economics, and along the way I learned to argue positions I did not necessarily hold, to defend them under challenge, and to change my mind in public when the argument required it. That habit of open, structured disagreement, which the tutorial system in Aberdeen cultivated so well, has been the single most useful professional skill I acquired anywhere. It is what allows me now to sit across from officials, MEPs, and industry peers whose views differ sharply from ours and to find, more often than not, a version of the argument we can both work with. Aberdeen was also profoundly international in a way that mattered. My classmates came from every continent, my professors from many more countries than the university's own, and the everyday reality of studying in that environment gave me an early apprenticeship in the kind of multicultural professional life I have led ever since. Curiosity, breadth, and the discipline of debate: those are the things I took from Aberdeen, and they are the things I have relied on every day of my career since.

Joni Smith is Director of Global Political Engagement at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, where she leads the Institute's global political engagement strategy, building relationships with political leaders, governments and strategic partners, and helping connect innovative policy ideas with the political relationships and coalitions needed to turn them into real-world impact.

Before joining the Tony Blair Institute, Joni served as Deputy Director of the Scottish Government's EU Directorate in Brussels, leading Scotland's engagement with the European Union during the post-Brexit period. She previously spent four years in Washington, DC as Scottish Affairs Counsellor at the British Embassy, where she led Scotland's political, economic and diplomatic engagement across the United States. Earlier in her career, she held a series of senior roles at the centre of the Scottish Government, including advising First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on policy, political strategy and parliamentary affairs, alongside leadership roles in communications and government reform. A graduate of the 黑料网 with an MA (Hons) in Politics and International Relations, Joni is passionate about helping students bridge the gap between academic study and professional practice. As an Executive Fellow, she brings practical insights into modern politics, diplomacy and international engagement, drawing on more than two decades of experience working at the heart of government and across international political networks. Her interests include political leadership, international affairs, government delivery, AI and the future of public policy, and preparing the next generation of leaders for careers in government, diplomacy and international organisations.

Philip Smith is a senior civil servant and diplomat with over 20 years' experience in diplomacy, international development and public policy across Africa, Asia and the UK. He has worked for the UK Government since 2002, initially with the Department for International Development (DFID) and now with its successor, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

He recently served in Uganda as UK Development Director where he was also Interim British High Commissioner. Philip led the UK's development strategy and a multi-million-pound aid portfolio, advising senior UK and Ugandan decision makers on economic growth, climate, governance and humanitarian issues. Philip's earlier career spanned Ghana, Liberia, Malawi and Nepal. As DFID Country Director in Ghana, he reshaped the UK’s partnership as the country moved “beyond aid”. In Malawi, he led humanitarian and resilience programmes. In Nepal, he worked with international partners after the civil war to support post-conflict reconstruction and strengthen climate resilience and disaster preparedness.

Alongside his government career, Philip is a Trustee for Practical Action, an international NGO working across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Now based in Aberdeen, Philip is keen to share practical insights from leadership, diplomacy and international relations with the university community. His interests include translating policy into delivery; collaboration and partnership between governments, international institutions and business; climate finance and the clean energy transition; humanitarian and refugee policy; geopolitics, the changing aid landscape and multilateral reform; and leadership and decision-making in complex settings.

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