Mark Ellis is Executive Director of the International Bar Association (IBA).

Prior to joining the IBA, Mr. Ellis spent ten years as the first Executive Director of the Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI), a project of the American Bar Association (ABA). Providing technical legal assistance to twenty-eight countries in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, CEELI remains the most extensive technical legal assistance project ever undertaken by the ABA.

In 1999, Mr. Ellis was appointed Legal Advisor to the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, chaired by Justice Richard J. Goldstone.

Mr. Ellis is also a consultant to The World Bank on investment policies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and has been an Adjunct Professor at The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law.

Mr. Ellis has degrees in Economics and Law and was twice a Fulbright Scholar at the Economic Institute in Zagreb, Croatia.

He is the co-recipient of the American Bar Association’s World Order Under Law Award, and the recipient of Florida State University’s Distinguished Graduate Award.

Mr. Ellis is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and serves on a number of boards, including the International Legal Assistance Consortium (ILAC), the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation at the Salzburg Seminar, DLA Piper Rudnick ‘New Perimeter’ probono project, and the Swedish Institute for Legal Development in Stockholm, Sweden. He has recently been appointed adviser to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office on international rule of law initiatives.