Stephen Wordsworth

Background

Wordsworth was born in Portuguese Talbot, South Wales, and educated at Street John's School Porthcawl, Epsom College and Downing College Cambridge, where he studied German and Russian (Master of Arts).

Career

He joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) in 1977. He served abroad in Moscow in Leonid Brezhnev’s last years, in Lagos through two military coups, in Bonn during the process of German reunification and at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe as a Political Adviser to SACEURs George Joulwan and Wesley Clark for three years during North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Implementation Force and SFOR operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In London, he held a range of posts in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Cabinet Office, including as Foreign and Commonwealth Office Section Head for relations with East Germany and Berlin as the Berlin Wall came down, and as Foreign and Commonwealth Office Head of Department dealing with the Western Balkans when Slobodan Milosevic was overthrown.

His last two overseas posts were as Minister/Deputy Head of Mission in Moscow during Vladimir Putin’s Presidency, and as Ambassador in Belgrade.

He had a high media profile in Serbia, and was the first foreign Ambassador in Belgrade to start blogging on current affairs After leaving the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Wordsworth joined the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA) as Executive Director in 2012.

Originally founded as the Academic Assistance Council in 1933 by William Beveridge, A V Hill and others, to assist Jewish and other academics forced to flee the Nazi regime, CARA now works with a network of some 70 universities in the United Kingdom to support academics from all over the world who have been forced to flee their home countries by discrimination, violence and death threats, at the hands of repressive regimes and extremist groups. CARA also operates overseas programmes to support academics in Iraq and Zimbabwe.

They have one son. 2012 – date: Executive Director, CARA (Council for Assisting Refugee Academics) 2006 – 2010: British Ambassador, Belgrade, Serbia 2003 – 2005: Deputy Head of Mission, British Embassy, Moscow, Russia 1999 – 2002: Head, Western Balkans Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office 1994 – 1998: Political Adviser to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Mons, Belgium 1990 – 1994: British Embassy, Bonn, Germany 1988 – 1990: Section Head, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for relations with the German Democratic Republic and for Allied responsibilities in Berlin under Quadripartite status, later for German Unification 1986 – 1988: Cabinet Office, London 1983 – 1986: British High Commission, Lagos, Nigeria 1982 – 1983: Eastern European and Soviet Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office 1981: Presidency Secretariat, United Kingdom Presidency of the European Community 1979 – 1981: British Embassy, Moscow, Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics 1977 – 1979: Eastern European and Soviet Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Achievements

• In 1992 he was honoured by Her Majesty the Queen with the award of Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order for his part in the organisation of her State Visit that year to Germany. At the same time he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was made a Companion of the Order of Street Michael and Street George in 2011.

Membership

Wordsworth was a member of the first cohort to take the Financial Times Non-Executive Director Certificate course, graduating in 2012. He is also a member of the British-Serbian Chamber of Commerce and of Northchapel Parish Council, in West Sussex.