Uniting
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Luke Baker is a senior adviser and head of media at Portland, a global communications consultancy, where he provides counsel to companies, international organizations, foundations and governments on media strategy and engagement, especially during periods of crisis, reputational challenge and legal disputes.

Before joining Portland, Baker was a correspondent and bureau chief for Reuters for more than 20 years, working across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He ran the Reuters bureau in Brussels from 2009-14, overseeing coverage of the European Union and NATO during the euro zone’s sovereign debt crisis and the build-up to’ Brexit’. He was bureau chief in Jerusalem from 2014-17, serving as chairman of the Foreign Press Association, and oversaw Reuters’ operations in Paris during Emmanuel Macron’s first term as president. Earlier in his career he had long-term postings in Southern African, Italy, Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq, when he was embedded with U.S. forces for the 2003 invasion. He is the co-author of “Untold Stories from the Front Line of the Iraq War” and the novel ‘Dateline Baghdad’.

Baker graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1995, where he was a Morehead-Cain scholar. He appears frequently in the media as a commentator on foreign affairs, geopolitics and the EU.