Catriona Nunn Paul Rennie OBE has spent more than twenty‑five years at the heart of global diplomacy, using economics as a lens to understand human behaviour and international relations. From early studies in Edinburgh and York to postings across continents, his career has been driven by curiosity, service, and a belief in the shared values that unite people worldwide.
“My greatest passion is exploration. Exploring new countries and new places, to remind myself how amazing and fragile our planet is. Exploring new peoples and cultures, to remind myself there is more that unites us than separates us; and to explore new ideas and concepts, to remind myself we must never stop learning or challenging ourselves.
A diplomatic career has given me the opportunity to fully realise that passion, but doing so in a way that puts public service at its core – engaging with new countries and cultures to directly support the British people: enabling their prosperity; ensuring their safety and security; and promoting the best of the UK to a global audience.
It has also given me the chance to put so much of what I have seen in context and think more deeply about the role the UK can play in solving the global challenges that confront all of us; as well as taking the fullest advantage of all the amazing new opportunities.
I suppose you could say my path began less out of certainty than curiosity. At school, I had three subjects I was good at and loved – English, history, and economics. I could imagine myself pursuing any of them, but I struggled to picture exactly what you do with an English or history degree. Economics, on the other hand, held out the promise of practical relevance. It seemed like it might take me places.
Initially I thought I might even study law at some point, but because Scottish law and English law differ, staying in Scotland made sense, so I set off to Edinburgh for my undergraduate degree. I also carried with me a somewhat naïve idea: that economics was a route to wealth. In my mind, a career in economics meant becoming a corporate lawyer or a banker – writing big checks, building riches.
But midway through my degree, I encountered something that shifted everything. In my third year I studied Development Economics and African Politics, and suddenly the world opened wider. The questions weren’t about a firm’s bottom line but about the relationships between nations, growth across continents, poverty and prosperity for billions of people. At that point, I thought: why would I want to work for a bank, when I could work for the World Bank?
The idea that I might join the IMF, the UN, or the World Bank electrified me. The scale and complexity of those issues seemed vastly more consequential and frankly, more interesting than private finance. A professor told me plainly that if I wanted to pursue that route, I would need a master’s degree. And so I went to York for my MSc in Economics.
Life at York
York was transformative in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Several of my classmates were government economists, already employed by Whitehall and sponsored into the program. That exposure shifted my perspective yet again: economics didn’t just live in international institutions, but also in the policy processes of my own country. Through conversations with them, I realised I could serve in government myself. It was the York experience that turned me toward the Diplomatic Service and the Government Economic Service.
I applied, and I became, quite literally, the first Diplomatic Service economist in the UK – candidate 001.
Alongside this sense of trajectory, York sharpened my intellectual passions. A course in “experimental economics,” what we now call behavioural economics, opened my eyes to the messiness of human behaviour. We like to imagine people as rational beings who weigh costs and benefits neatly. But experiments show otherwise. There’s the classic trolley problem: most people will happily divert a runaway tram onto one track, sacrificing one life to save five. But if the same outcome requires pushing a person off a bridge, suddenly most refuse, even though the moral arithmetic is identical.
What that reveals is internal conflict – the way context reshapes decision‑making. For me, that is the essence of why public policy is hard. Citizens themselves are conflicted; they can give completely opposite answers to the same problem depending on how it’s framed. How then do you write laws for self‑driving cars, or budget allocations for schools and hospitals, when the public themselves are inconsistent in their values?
Those lessons never left me. They weren’t theoretical; they reshaped how I saw human behaviour, governance, and ultimately diplomacy itself.
“Diplomacy is not elusive or elite. It is simply the professionalisation of an instinct everyone recognises. People say, “that was very diplomatic of you.” Nobody says, “that was very lawyerly of you” or “that was very teacherly of you.” Diplomacy is inherent; we do it from childhood. To me, my career has been just that: an expression of an inherent human characteristic, turned into service.”
Beyond the classroom, York gave me my first taste of independence. I had lived at home during my undergraduate years in Edinburgh, but at York I stayed in St. Lawrence Court, a postgrad hall. It was the first time I had truly lived away from home, and that change forced me to grow.
Much of my year revolved around classmates. A master’s program doesn’t last long enough to join endless societies or sports clubs, so our friendships became our social life. York was strikingly international – Italians, Greeks, Chinese, French – so much so that the British students felt like the minority. That globalism shaped me profoundly, especially when paired with the economic ideas I was studying.
Archery also returned to my life at York in a special way. At Edinburgh I competed at the World Student Games, representing Great Britain. At York, I joined the archery club with low expectations. Yet at the British University Championships I had a golden day: I won individually, and our collective score secured York’s team bronze – its first ever medal at that level.
At Edinburgh, winning was expected. At York, that bronze medal felt deeply special. The delight on my teammates’ faces was extraordinary. It reminded me why sport matters: the joy of shared achievement, unexpected victories, and enthusiasm untainted by expectation. That small bronze remains one of my most cherished medals.
Breaking into Diplomacy
Joining the Foreign Office as its first economist was more complicated than I anticipated. To qualify, I had to pass two sets of hurdles: the Government Economic Service exams and the Diplomatic Service exams. Out of 500 applicants, only two of us passed both.
When I entered, and particularly as the first of a new cadre, the career path was far from clear. At first, I sat in the Economics Department, then was posted overseas as Head of Economics in Brazil. From there, the career broadened out: political posts in India, development programming, service in the Cabinet Office during the Blair–Brown transition, Deputy Ambassador in Malaysia, trade and global issues in Washington. Economics remained an anchor, but the Foreign Office wanted breadth: diplomats who could apply economic literacy across wider policy. That gave me opportunities far beyond a narrow economist track.
“Economics taught me to appreciate human behaviour’s irrationalities; diplomacy let me see them at the scale of societies.”
One moment still sticks out. Years earlier, as a young traveller in New York, I had stood in the UN’s visitor’s gallery and gazed at the Security Council chamber. I remember staring at the “United Kingdom” nameplate and thinking: what kind of person gets to sit there? I couldn’t even begin to imagine the path. Four years later, there I was, seated at that desk, looking up at the same gallery. That surreal switch – from outsider to insider – remains one of the most extraordinary moments of my career.
Global Postings
Over twenty‑five years, my postings have carried me across continents. And each time, it has been the daily life of societies that taught me most.
Diplomacy consists not just of state visits and summitry, but of understanding electorates, businesses, communities. Look beneath the big headlines and you find individual anxieties: a worker in Nebraska focused on job loss; a voter in Cardiff worried about health care. Those concerns shape political decisions as much as international strategy does.
That is why diplomacy remains indispensable, even in an age of instant communication. Zoom calls cannot convey the subtleties of how people think, or why they value what they value. You only grasp it by walking the streets, shopping in grocery stores, listening to the silences between conversations. Economics taught me to appreciate human behaviour’s irrationalities; diplomacy let me see them at the scale of societies.
In Malaysia, I led education strategy across Southeast Asia. At the time, Malaysia was the third‑largest source of UK students in the world. We realised there was huge untapped potential to connect British education more coherently across the region. And so we created the Education is GREAT campaign.
What began as a small initiative – with just £50,000 of support – grew into an £18 million programme with over 250 partners. It brought together schools, universities, vocational training services, and education technology providers, all under a single UK “brand.” British schools abroad began putting the campaign’s logo on their brochures. Universities found new students. Technical training providers discovered new markets.
I often describe education as the “industry of optimism.” Nobody enters education wanting to emerge less capable. Every student, though sometimes dragged unwillingly through certain courses, is ultimately investing in hope for the future. Helping to amplify British education overseas – from iPads in classrooms to technical training programmes in welding and engineering – felt like amplifying optimism itself.
As Director of Diplomacy 2020, I worked on modernising the Foreign Office. The challenge lay in reconciling a Victorian‑era structure with modern expectations. Foreign postings used to assume wealth, male breadwinners, stay‑at‑home wives, and children sent to boarding schools. Today, diplomats are men and women, often in dual‑career partnerships, raising children who need stable education, sometimes in same‑sex relationships in countries that do not legally recognise them.
Modernisation has meant grappling with those complexities. It also involves rethinking careers: younger officers see four‑year postings as an eternity, prefer agile careers, and expect flexibility. Yet diplomacy demands patience and embedded presence. As my old boss said: diplomacy is a contact sport – it only works if you’re really out there.
Life in Washington and Los Angeles
As head of trade and global issues in Washington, I covered everything from climate to AI. I arrived during COVID, when securing reagents and negotiating the reopening of the US‑UK travel corridor became urgent tasks. I worked with partners on climate in the run‑up to COP26, and on AI policy that later fed into the UK’s AI Safety Summit.
Each of those projects reflected the quiet, cog‑turning nature of diplomacy: success is never yours alone, but you hope your effort turns a bigger wheel further down the chain.
Now, as Consul General in Los Angeles, my plate is broader still. The upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028 is a huge focus – not just supporting athletes, but leveraging opportunities in sports industries, infrastructure, and security. The 2026 World Cup will be another. And so are the Oscars’ 100th anniversary in 2028, with Britain as Hollywood’s closest creative partner.
Yet LA, and the wider region I cover, is far more than Hollywood. It’s home to aerospace industry, rocket technology, biotech in San Diego, semiconductor giants in Arizona, renewable energy in Hawaii and Utah. Los Angeles County is the largest manufacturing county in America. The economy I cover is equivalent in size to France. My role is to connect that powerhouse of innovation with opportunities for Britain.
But there are also crises. Wildfires, for example, tested our consular services. One moment you’re promoting trade and culture; the next you are arranging support for distressed citizens amid evacuations. That is a unique duty of diplomats: protecting nationals overseas. No PR agency or trade department can substitute for that. It is the piece of diplomacy only we do, and it defines the human side of our mission.
Recognition and Reflection
In 2015, I was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours for services to UK–India relations. The recognition floored me. For me and my family, it was an extraordinary honour, humbling in every way.
“Success is never yours alone, but you hope your effort turns a bigger wheel further down the chain.”
What struck me most at the ceremony was not my own medal, but those of the people around me – individuals who had dedicated decades to charities, local clubs, youth services. To stand among them was humbling beyond words. It made me realise how unique the British honours system is at reaching into all levels of society, from those working quietly on local football pitches to those in international negotiations. That breadth says something profound about Britain: we value contributions in all their forms.
Advice for Students and Alumni
The advice I always give is simple: don’t self‑select out. If you’re interested in diplomacy, public policy, or international development, there is a path. I had never left Edinburgh until I was 21. I struggled with languages at school. I had no role models in diplomacy. But 25 years later I’ve served across the world, working in five languages.
The Foreign Office recruits from every discipline – from zoology to physics to English literature. Our diversity of backgrounds is our strength, because every society you serve in needs something slightly different. If you want to travel, want to make a difference, and are motivated by public service, the pathway is open.
And for those in economics: remember it is more than numbers. It is about people, psychology, ethics, resource allocation – in other words, life itself.
Diplomacy is not elusive or elite. It is simply the professionalisation of an instinct everyone recognises. People say, “that was very diplomatic of you.” Nobody says, “that was very lawyerly of you” or “that was very teacherly of you.” Diplomacy is inherent; we do it from childhood. To me, my career has been just that: an expression of an inherent human characteristic, turned into service.
One final thought: I love the fact that York continues to rise. When I studied there, it wasn’t part of the Russell Group. Now it is. And every step forward the university makes, my degree looks stronger. It’s one of the few things in life that, like holding a share in a company, appreciates in value as the institution itself grows.
“For those in economics: remember it is more than numbers. It is about people, psychology, ethics, resource allocation – in other words, life itself.”
That is why I will always support York’s international ambition. Because as York grows, so too do all of us who carry its name with us. And for me, that pride is lifelong.”
