Mark V. Vlasic has served as a soldier, a lawyer, a professor, and a diplomat, and has worked for the United Nations, the White House, the Pentagon, and a large international law firm. He currently serves at the World Bank Group, where he works on a presidential initiative to help countries recover looted assets from grand corruption cases.
In June 2006, Mr. Vlasic was one of only 14 professionals appointed to serve as a 2006-2007 White House Fellow. As part of his nonpartisan fellowship, Mr. Vlasic served as a special assistant to the Secretary of Defense, where he focused on U.S. foreign policy, bilateral relations, and assistance to the President’s Special Envoy to Sudan. In recognition of his contributions to the Department, including being a “valuable member of Secretary of Defense’s official delegations to Europe, Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East, and to NATO Defense Ministerial meetings,” Mr. Vlasic was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service by Secretary Robert M. Gates.
Prior to becoming a White House Fellow, Mr. Vlasic was an Associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where he practiced in the firm’s Public Policy, Banking, International Trade, and Business Crimes & Investigations Practice Groups. Before entering private practice, Mr. Vlasic served as a prosecution attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, where he was a member of the Slobodan Milosevic and General Radislav Krstic (Srebrenica) trial and investigative teams, and focused on the genocide in Bosnia. As a U.S. Army officer, he has been attached to reserve units on Capitol Hill and at the Defense Attaché Office at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. He has also served in the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
A Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for International Law & Politics, Mr. Vlasic has taught as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and has lectured at numerous academic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, including Oxford University, Yale Law School, the NATO School, the U.S. Military Academy, the Baltic Defense College, and the Danish Center for Human Rights. Recognized as an expert in international law, Mr. Vlasic was one of a small team of international lawyers selected to help train the Iraqi judges that tried Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Vlasic has provided legal commentary to CNN, CBS, FOX News, NPR, CTV, bloggingheads.tv, Voice of America, The Washington Post and USA Today, and been published by Foreign Policy, The New Republic, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, The Tax Lawyer, USA Today, Legal Times, the Toronto Star, the Ventura County Star, and the Sudan Tribune. He is a member of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo, Italy, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Humanity in Action Foundation, the Board of Trustees of the Atlas Service Corps, the International Advisory Council of the Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology, is listed in Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in International Humanitarian Law/International Criminal Law, and was profiled as an “International Lawyer” in Esquire magazine. In 2006, Mr. Vlasic was awarded the Frank Wheat Award for his leadership and dedication to pro bono and community service, and the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship.
After attending public schools in California, Mr. Vlasic studied business, theology and government at Georgetown University while on an Army ROTC scholarship, and received his Juris Doctorate, cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center. He holds a Certificate in International Law from The Hague Academy of International Law and conducted post-doctorate research at Universiteit Leiden as a NAF-Fulbright Scholar to the Netherlands. Mr. Vlasic is a member of the Bars of California, the District of Columbia, and the Supreme Court of the United States, and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.