Michael Elliott was President and Chief Executive Officer from 2011 to 2016. In his five years leading the organization, ONE increased its global footprint, and saw its membership rise from 2 million to more than 7 million, of which 2.8 million are in Africa. Elliott also oversaw the successful merger of (RED) with ONE in 2012. He died in 2016 after living with cancer for more than two years, having moved on to become a Senior Strategic Advisor to ONE earlier in the year. He is much missed by his family, friends and colleagues around the world.

Before joining ONE in 2011, Elliott had a distinguished career in the media. He served as editor of both TIME International and Newsweek International, and as Political Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of The Economist, where he was the founding author of both the “Bagehot” and “Lexington” columns. Elliott was a columnist on the global economy for FORTUNE magazine, and has written and presented many television documentaries that have been broadcast all over the world. He was the author of four books, including “The Day Before Yesterday,” an acclaimed history of the post-1945 United States.

Elliott was born and raised in Liverpool. He earned two degrees from Oxford University, and prior to his career in journalism, he was a member of the Central Policy Review Staff in Britain’s Cabinet Office. He started his career teaching in universities in the US and UK, ending his time in academic life with a tenured position at the London School of Economics.

Elliott sat on a number of official bodies, and served on the boards or advisory committees of many non-profits, including currently InterAction, the International Center for Journalists, Beyond Sport, and Transparency International (USA). He was chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Poverty and Sustainable Development and sat on the advisory panel of the UNDP’s Human Development Report and the Board of the Global Poverty Project. Among other honors, he was named one of the world’s 25 inspiring CEOs by GoodNet in 2015, and was an officer of the Order of the British Empire.