Georgetown Law

Mark.Vlasic has served as a soldier, a lawyer, a prosecutor, a professor, a producer, and a diplomat, and has worked for the White House, the Pentagon, the World Bank, the United Nations, a major television studio, and a large international law firm. He is currently a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor of Law & Public Policy at Georgetown University and Principal at Madison Law & Strategy Group pllc, where he is the partner responsible for the firm’s international practice. Focused on issues related to international law, private/corporate diplomacy, public-private partnerships, human rights/hostage negotiations, social responsibility/impact, interfaith dialogue, strategic philanthropy, cultural heritage/museum law, stakeholder/community engagement and asset recovery-related matters, Professor Vlasic helps clients identify key stakeholders from the political, regulatory and NGO sectors, and works with clients to develop and execute strategies to achieve sustainable results. Professor Vlasic served as an outside pro bono advisor to the Director-General of UNESCO on cultural heritage protection and “blood antiquities” issues and his related work inspired the lead character “Danny” in the action-adventure series BLOOD & TREASURE for CBS Studios, Paramount+ and Amazon Prime. He is an Executive Producer of the hit scripted series and works on social impact television matters in Hollywood. Professor Vlasic also serves as an ITAC Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and as Senior Advisor to Techstars, the largest pre-seed investor in the world. Professor Vlasic’s private practice background includes:
–Working with international organizations, sovereign governments, foundations, family offices, multinational corporations, museums, and NGOs regarding complex international law, trade, human rights, ESG, public policy and strategy matters, including World Bank/IFC/United Nations collaboration, procurement, sustainability, clean energy and land development issues, electronic/green currencies, stolen antiquities/cultural heritage matters, international shipwreck/salvage issues, state succession/boundary issues, sovereign property matters, Vatican/inter-faith engagement, human rights/prison abuse investigations, combating politically motivated prosecutions and INTERPOL Red Notice arrest warrant abuse issues, hostage negotiations and freeing political prisoners from totalitarian regimes, international land development/architectural projects (including an “tech city” in Kenya, an “innovation hub” in Botswana and a “sustainable city” in South Africa), and social responsibility/strategic philanthropy issues;
–Providing advice regarding private diplomacy and international corporate diplomacy/international business development, defense/security matters, public-private partnerships, international banking/project finance, and international arbitration/litigation issues (including at the European Court of Human Rights);
–Participating in asset recovery, cartel, foreign corruption, and securities fraud investigations/matters around the world (including the Charles Taylor/Liberia and Muammar Gaddafi/Libya asset recovery cases); and,
–Advising clients on the application and enforcement of U.S. economic sanctions and embargoes, export controls, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (including projects in, and engagement with, Cuba), rule of law/transitional justice/anti-corruption/constitutional law matters (in Bosnia, Brazil, Georgia, Iraq, Montenegro, Libya, Rwanda and Serbia), and investigations and enforcement actions by the U.S. Departments of State, Commerce, Justice, and Treasury, as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Prior to his return to academia and private practice, Professor Vlasic was a public sector specialist at the World Bank Group, where he served as the first head of operations of the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative, launched by President Robert Zoellick and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to help developing countries recover stolen assets from past dictators and grand corruption cases. A member of StAR’s management team, Professor Vlasic was responsible for country engagements on four continents, furthered bilateral relations with major financial centers, foreign governments and civil society organizations, and worked on the Sani Abacha/Nigeria, Jean-Claude Duvalier/Haiti cases, among others.

Before joining the Bank, Professor Vlasic was competitively selected and appointed by the President to serve as a White House Fellow. Professor Vlasic served as a special assistant to theSecretary of Defense (focused on foreign policy issues and bilateral relations) and advisor 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,” Professor Vlasic was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service by Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Prior to his government service, Professor Vlasic practiced law in the litigation, public policy, banking, and international trade practice groups at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and served as a prosecution attorney at the United Nations 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 mass executions and genocide in Bosnia. As a U.S. Army officer, he has been attached to units on Capitol Hill and at the Defense Attaché Office at the U.S.Embassy in The Hague, and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. Professor Vlasic has also served in the Executive Office of the President, Office of the United States Trade Representative, where he worked on WTO Ministerial issues.

An Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and Senior Fellow at Georgetown’s Institute for Law, Science & Global Security, and the Institute of International Economic Law, Professor Vlasic is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy, a faculty member with the Georgetown Environment Initiative and Georgetown’s Center on National Security & the Law, and has served as an outside pro bono advisor to the Director-General of UNESCO regarding blood antiquities and terrorism financing issues. He has provided advice to the U.S. National Intelligence Council, served on the UN Special Rapporteur for Culture’s Expert Group, and has lectured at numerous institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, including British Parliament, Oxford University, Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, the NATO School, the U.S. Military Academy, Moscow State University, The Hague Academy of International Law, the Baltic Defense College, the Danish Center for Human Rights, and the University of Michigan, where he delivered a Commencement Address. Professor Vlasic served on the U.S. Delegation to the Pan Am 103 “Lockerbie” (Libyan) terrorist bombing trial in the Netherlands, and in 2005, he was part of a select team of international experts that helped train the Iraqi judges that tried Saddam Hussein. He is a collaborator with the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate Global Counter-Terrorism Research Network, and has briefed the U.S. Congress on numerous issues, including the bipartisan Congressional Task Force on Anti-Terrorism & Proliferation Financing.

Professor Vlasic has provided legal commentary to BBC, BBC World, CNN, CNN International, CBS, FOX News, NPR, CTV, CBC News, Bloomberg News, Al Jazeera English, bloggingheads.tv, the World Economic Forum, Voice of America, the History News Network, the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, the Wall Street Journal, TIME, the Washington Post, ,The Times of London, the Christian Science Monitor, the Guardian, ,Correio Braziliense, ,El País, ,De Groene Amsterdammer, USA Today, and the Yale Law Journal, and has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, The Atlantic, the Washington Times, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, The Agenda by the World Economic Forum, the University of Oxford’s Journal of International Criminal Justice, the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, the Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights, the Georgetown Journal of International Law, the Durham Law Review, the American University International Law Review, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, the Yale Journal of International Affairs, the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, the NATO Legal Gazette, The Tax Lawyer, the Miami Herald, USA Today, The World Post/Huffington Post, the Guardian, the Toronto Star, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, The National Post, CNN.com, the Cayman Financial Review, ,Legal Times, ,India Times, Arab News, ,Americas Quarterly, the Ventura County Star, ,Al Jazeera Online, and the Sudan Tribune. He has also contributed to seven books: The Palgrave Handbook of Criminal and Terrorism Financing Law (Palgrave); The Responsibility to Protect: the promise of stopping mass atrocities in our time (Oxford); Prosecuting Maritime Piracy (Cambridge); International Conflicts & Mediation (DGP/CNPq/UNFA); The Business Case for Sustainable Finance (Routledge); Responsibility to Protect in Theory and Practice (GV Zalozba); and, The Encyclopedia of Transnational Crime and Justice (Sage).

The U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. Secretary of Commerce appointed Professor Vlasic to serve on their Industry Trade Advisory Committee on Services & Finance Industries. Professor Vlasic was also selected to serve as a designated representative to the Secretary of State’s Overseas Security Advisory Council, as Legal Advisor to the Clooney Foundation for Justice, and as a member of the U.S. Institute of Peace’s International Advisory Council. More recently, Professor Vlasic was appointed to serve as Chairman of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Leadership Advisory Board and as a regional panelist for the White House Fellowship Program.

Invited to serve on the board of directors, advisory boards and advisory groups of numerous institutions, companies and Professor Vlasic’s current and past board-related work includes service with: the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art; Kinecta Financial Management Company, LLC; Kinecta Federal Credit Union (Supervisory Committee and Chair of the Advisory Council); the NCAC Fulbright Association; Humanity in Action, Inc.; the White House Fellows Foundation (Board Secretary); Atlas Service Corps; the Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology (Co-Chair); Young Professionals in Foreign Policy; the Public International Law & Policy Group; the American Slovenian Education Foundation (Co-Chair of the Advisory Board); Ladies America; the American Anti-Corruption Institute; the Center on Sanctions & Illicit Finance/Center on Economic and Financial Power; the Syria Justice & Accountability Centre; the Global Teacher Prize; the Heritage in War Project (Stockholm University/Open University); Red Arch Cultural Heritage Law & Policy Research, Inc.; the Franklin D. Roosevelt International Disability Rights Award (awarded by the UN Secretary-General); Tomorrow.me; FTLO Travel; AnchorFree, Inc.; Artemis Technology Group; Artemis Climate Partners; and, Open Screenplay, Inc.

Knighted by both the Vatican and the Ethiopian Crown for his interfaith and cultural diplomacy work, Professor Vlasic has been honored by the World Economic Forum in Davos as Young Global Leader and commissioned a Kentucky Colonel. He is the co-awardee of a 2022 Telly Award, “the world’s largest honor for video and television content across all screens,” and his action-adventure television series, BLOOD & TREASURE, received four nominations from the MovieGuide Awards, including their highest honor for television.

Professor Vlasic is founding co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s YGL Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Advisory Council, having served as a consultant to the Forum, where he was a rapporteur for the private Informal Gathering of World Economic Leaders (IGWAL) meetings for heads of state and heads of government in Davos. In addition, he is a member of the inaugural World Economic Forum Faith in Action Advisory Board. Professor Vlasic is also Senior Fellow with the U.S. Council on Competitiveness, and a Fellow in the UN Alliance of Civilizations, the British American Project, the U.S.-Japan Leadership Program, the U.S.-Spain Council’s and the American Swiss Foundation’s Young Leaders Programs, and with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ and the Council for the United States & Italy’s Young Leaders Forums, and serves as a member of the Vatican’s Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation, the Asset Recovery Experts Network, the Consensus for American Security, the Pacific Council on International Policy, the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo, Italy, and the Atlantik-Brucke’s German-American Young Leaders Program. He is listed in Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in International Humanitarian Law/International Criminal Law, was profiled as an “International Lawyer” in Esquire and as an “International Crusader” in Washington Life, and was honored by the BMW Foundation as a “Responsible Leader” and by the Development Executive Group (DEVEX) as an “international development renaissance man” and “Top 40 Under 40” in international development. Professor Vlasic was awarded the inaugural Frank Wheat Award (Gibson Dunn’s pro bono lawyer of the year award) for his assistance to the Iraqi judiciary and the Gold Medal for Swimming at the United Nations Inter-Agency Games (“UN Olympics”) in Turkey, and has worked, studied and traveled in over 100 countries.

After attending public schools and UCLA in California, Professor Vlasic studied business, theology and government at Georgetown University while on an Army ROTC scholarship, received his Juris Doctorate, cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center, and was awarded Certificates in Public and Private International Law from The Hague Academy of International Law. Professor Vlasic conducted his post-doctorate research at Universiteit Leiden as a NAF-Fulbright Scholar to the Netherlands, and his executive leadership training with the World Economic Forum’s programs at Oxford University’s Said Business School and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Professor Vlasic is a member of the Bars of California, the District of Columbia, and the Supreme Court of the United States, and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.