Mark Ritchie

Mark is the co-founder of Minnesota’s bid to host the 2027 World Fair and currently serves as Board Chair of Minnesota’s World Fair Fund and on the board the Minnesota USA Expo Bid Committee. Mark was Minnesota’s elected Secretary of State from 2007 to 2015, and recently retired from serving as president of Global Minnesota, one of the oldest and largest World Affairs Councils in the United States. Mark serves as Minnesota’s Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army and as National Secretary of the National Advisory Board of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

In 1994, Ritchie was a co-founder of the Global Environment & Trade Study, located at Yale University, which conducted research on the linkages and potential synergies between international trade and the environment. That year, he launched a series of conferences to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the major post-Second World War global institutions, including the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nations, The Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Human Rights Commission. The 1994 conference, focused on the creation of the Bretton Woods Institutions, was held at the Mt. Washington Hotel, and it featured many of the "old timers" who had attended the original 1944 Bretton Woods Conference and other co-founders of the postwar economic system.

Mark graduated from Iowa State University in 1971 and from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota in 2013.

EDRC's work with Mark dates back to when he was President of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (Jan 1986 - Apr 2006). Mark is also a member of the North-Atlantic Civil-Society Working-Group on Environment and Security (NCWES) coordinated by EDRC and a participant in EDRC’s project on Transatlantic Responses to 21st Century Environmental Challenges.