About Jo
Credit : Simon Callaghan Photography
Jo is a specialist in education and technology policy with roles at a number of global universities and board positions at world-leading companies.
He is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London, a Fellow of Birkbeck College, University of London and a Member of the Council of the Dyson Institute for Engineering and Technology.
Executive Chairman of FutureLearn, the global digital learning platform, he also serves on the board of Access Education Group, the largest independent provider of further education and specialist training for the creative industries.
Jo is a Member of the House of Lords, a Member of the Privy Council, an Honorary Governor of the Ditchley Foundation and a Member of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
He was a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government the Harvard Kennedy School between 2019-2023.
A member of Parliament between 2010-2019, Jo held prominent positions in Government under three Prime Ministers, including Head of the No10 Downing Street Policy Unit and Minister of State, attending Cabinet, for Universities, Science & Innovation.
Before entering Parliament, he worked at the Financial Times for 13 years, in a variety of roles, including as Associate Editor, Head of Lex, and South Asia Bureau Chief. His books include Reconnecting Britain and India: Ideas for an Enhanced Partnership (Academic Foundation 2011, with Dr Rajiv Kumar), and The Man who Tried to Buy the World (Penguin, 2003).
Jo was a scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, where he received a first-class degree in Modern History in 1994. He also has an MBA from INSEAD and a licence spéciale from the Institut d'Etudes Européennes of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, where he was a Wiener Anspach Fellow.
He is married to Amelia Gentleman. They have two teenage children and live in London.