Seán Cleary is executive vice-chair of the FutureWorld Foundation; an advisory council member of the World Leadership Alliance-Club de Madrid, EIT Climate-KIC, and the Institute of Advanced Studies, Kőszeg; a faculty member of the Parmenides Foundation; a senior fellow and senior advisor of the Salzburg Global Seminar; special adviser to the Global Solutions Initiative; a diplomacy moderator of the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator; and a director of private and public companies.
Cleary saw diplomatic service in Iran, the U.S., and Namibia, en route to its independence in 1990, where he facilitated negotiations between Namibia's political parties, the release of political prisoners, and the adoption of a pre-independence Bill of Rights. In South Africa, he served on the Facilitating Committee and Preparatory Committee of the National Peace Accord, where he chaired the Working Group on the Code of Conduct for Political Parties and Organizations; and on the NEPAD Business Steering Group. Cleary has served on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations, including the Peace and Reconstruction Foundation, LEAD International, Carbon War Room, Rocky Mountain Institute, International Foundation for Electoral Systems, Operation Hope, and the Salzburg Global Seminar. He has been a strategic adviser to the World Economic Forum, and its Arab Business Council and an executive consultant to the Prime Minister's Office of the United Arab Emirates. Cleary studied social sciences, philosophy, and law at the University of Cape Town, University of South Africa, and Pahlavi University in Shiraz, and has an MBA from Henley Management College, Brunel University. He has lectured on global corporate strategy at business schools, and the strategic challenges of globalization, and conflict resolution, at defense colleges, universities, and institutes around the world. Cleary has received academic and public service awards, co-authored Resilience to Risk (Human & Rosseau 2006) and Global Risks (Palgrave Macmillan 2007) with Thierry Malleret, and published numerous journal articles and book chapters, including Cognitive Constraints and Behavioral Biases in Learning from Catastrophes: Strategies for Reaction and Response (Wharton, Pearson 2009).