Whit Mason
Mason Change Communications
London, United Kingdom
Whit Mason has spent over 20 years working at the intersection of communications, conflict and political change. He began his career by founding and editing two newspapers in Siberia and the Russian Far East during and after the dethronement of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He went on to write for Asiaweek magazine in Hong Kong and report on the Bosnian war and on North and South Korea for CBS News. He has had senior communications roles in Kosovo (UNMIK), Pakistan (USAID), Azerbaijan (Internews), Iraq, Syria and Myanmar/Burma. He has explored and written about the relationship between religion and political culture in Turkey, Iran and the southern Balkans as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs. Whit has led multinational teams in Australia, Asia and Europe, written for leading newspapers and published books on the international interventions in Kosovo and in Afghanistan and on the influence of democratic politics on Islamist organisations. He is a member of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, a DCE for the UK Stabilisation Unit, a member of the Australian Civilian Corps, and a life member of the Institute of Current World Affairs (Washington, D.C.) A near death experience on a plane in Afghanistan prompted him to swim across the Dardanelles in 2010.
