Thomas Reilly graduated from the LSE and qualified as a commercial lawyer. He worked in London and Brussels before joining the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1998. He served in a range of South American and Middle Eastern countries before becoming Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Cairo and being named as the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative to Misrata during the Arab Spring. He served as UK Ambassador to Morocco and Mauritania between 2017-2020, and, following Brexit, negotiated a number of bilateral agreements including on Education and Trade.

Thomas worked for Royal Dutch Shell between 2012 -2017 firstly as Head of Government Relations and then, as Senior Advisor on International and Regulatory Affairs, he worked on the merger between Shell and BG. He also led compliance teams working on Russian associated gas projects.

Since leaving the Foreign Office at the end of his posting to Morocco, Thomas has worked as a Senior Advisor to the law firm, Covington in which capacity he has advised major UK, US and EU companies on their disputes and relationships with Governments in the UK, the EU, the Middle East and Africa.

He has recently established his own consultancy, helping companies identify and mitigate international geopolitical risk.

Thomas sits on the Trustee Board for a Moroccan girls’ education charity as well as on the Board of Governors for a school in Morocco. He is the President of the European political group ‘Renew’ for his Department (Alpes de Haute Provence) in France.