2011 Keynote Address

JONATHAN PARISH
Senior Policy Planning Officer and Speechwriter
Office of the Spokesman
NATO Headquarters
Brussels, Belgium

Born in 1958, Jonathan Parish was educated at Sandbach School, and at university in Sheffield, Aix-en-Provence and Hamburg. He was commissioned into the British Army and trained as a helicopter pilot. His command tours at flight and squadron level were inGermanyand at regimental level in theUK. During his regimental command, operational commitments included deployments toBosnia(twice) and Kosovo.

He further trained at the Army Staff College, and his staff roles included serving as a Military Assistant at SHAPE in Belgium, leading the concepts, doctrine, digitisation and operational requirements team at British Army Headquarters Land Command, and acting as Chief of operational support at NATO Joint Headquarters in Madrid.

His final tour in the Army was in the International Military Staff at Headquarters NATO, where he was responsible for the military aspects of NATO Enlargement and Combating Terrorism. In September 2004 he took early retirement from the Army in order to assume his current post as Senior Policy Planning Officer and Speechwriter to the NATO Secretary General.