About Jo

Jo Johnson is Executive Chairman of FutureLearn, the global online learning platform. He works internationally across higher education, digital learning, and education investment, with board and advisory roles at leading education and skills organisations across the UK, North America, Europe, and Asia.

He serves on the board of Access Education Group and is a member of the Council of the Dyson Institute for Engineering and Technology. He is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and a Fellow of Birkbeck College, University of London. He is also a member of the House of Lords, the European Council on Foreign Relations, and an Honorary Governor of the Ditchley Foundation.

Jo previously served as UK Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, attending Cabinet, with responsibility for higher education, research funding, and international education. He also served as Head of the No.10 Policy Unit, advising the Prime Minister on domestic policy across government. He was a Member of Parliament from 2010 to 2019 and was appointed to the House of Lords in 2020.

He was a Senior Fellow and Research Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2019 to 2023.

Before entering public life, Jo spent 13 years at the Financial Times, where he held senior editorial roles including Associate Editor, Head of Lex, South Asia Bureau Chief, and Paris correspondent.

He is the author of two books: The Man Who Tried to Buy the World (Penguin, 2003, with Martine Orange) and Reconnecting Britain and India: Ideas for an Enhanced Partnership (Academic Foundation, 2011, with Dr Rajiv Kumar).

He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a scholar and received a first-class degree in Modern History. He also holds an MBA from INSEAD and studied at the Université Libre de Bruxelles as a Wiener Anspach Fellow.

He lives in London with his wife, the journalist Amelia Gentleman, and their children.