Jonathan Blanchard-Smith

Jonathan is a Director and Fellow at SAMI Consulting, where he works at the intersection of futures, strategy, and institutional decision-making. He brings more than thirty years’ experience advising governments, international organisations, and complex institutions on how to think clearly about long-term change under conditions of uncertainty.

Jonathan is well known for his work on futures methodology and strategic foresight. He was a co-author and contributor to the UK Government’s Futures Toolkit, now widely used across Whitehall and beyond, and has led major commissions for the Government Office for Science, including work on chronic risk and resilience (with the Cabinet Office) and international comparisons of futures practice in government. Current work includes SAMI’s flagship programme for the Law Society on Geopolitics to 2040, as well as projects for GO-Science on the Future of Childhood and Adolescence, and commissions for the Home Office, Defra, and a major UK university.

His work is characterised by an ability to connect rigorous futures analysis with the realities of policy, regulation, investment, and organisational behaviour. Recent projects include scenario and implications work for the European Commission (covering ten global regions and over forty discrete futures), strategic change and visioning programmes for European and UK member organisations, and advisory work at the interface of geopolitics, technology, and institutional risk.

Alongside his consulting work, Jonathan has held a wide range of senior leadership and governance roles. He has been Executive Chairman of the Reform Club in London, chaired national charities and member organisations, and currently serves as Chairman of the Natural Resources Forum, an international extractives-sector think tank. Earlier in his career he was London Managing Director, and later Global Chief Marketing Officer, of the New York Institute of Finance, and founded his first company, a specialist publishing firm in government and defence, in his mid-twenties.

Jonathan is frequently invited to speak and convene at senior-level events on geopolitics, strategic risk, and futures thinking, including engagements with diplomatic academies, regulators, and international audiences. He is valued by clients as a calm, intellectually exacting presence: someone who can impose structure on ambiguity, challenge weak assumptions, and help decision-makers arrive at positions that will still make sense when the world changes.

He holds a BA (Joint Language Hons) degree from the University of Manchester and an MPhil from St Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge.

You can contact Jonathan on: jbs@samiconsulting.co.uk