Members

Mark Entwistle draws on a rich and integrated mix of professional experience over four decades and across disciplines in business, diplomacy and international affairs, public policy issue management and advocacy, government relations and operations, political risk assessment, strategic communications, media relations and public affairs. He is currently Managing Director of Privus Capital Inc. (www.privuscapital.com), a strategic advisory firm and boutique merchant bank in Toronto, Canada as well as Acasta Cuba Capital Inc. (www.acastacc.com), a specialist business development and advisory firm focused exclusively on Cuba. Mark is also simultaneously Canadian Managing Partner of Atlantic Advisory Partners (www.atlanticadvisorypartners.com), a joint collaboration between Privus Capital and German Spitzberg Partners LLC to provide strategic business counsel to Canadian and European companies to enable them to take full advantage respectively of free trade and investment between the European Union and Canada (the CETA). Prior to launching Privus Capital, he had been a Founding Partner of merchant bank Acasta Capital Inc. and earlier Special Advisor to New York-based Teneo Strategy LLC. Mark has served as a director of both public and private companies. He was Ambassador of Canada to the Republic of Cuba for four years from 1993 to 1997. As Ambassador, Mark guided all elements of the historically important and delicate relationship with Cuba, including political, commercial and security relations. He was the architect of a dynamic trade development strategy. Canada's trade with Cuba increased markedly, doubling year-over-year for two years in a row and, during his tenure, Canada became Cuba's largest trade and investment partner. Having spent almost three decades involved in Cuban affairs, Mark is one of the world’s leading experts on Cuba. Canada’s national newspaper The Globe and Mail has called him “the leading Canadian expert on Cuba” (Canada’s ‘leading’ Cuba expert on how to do business in Havana - The Globe and Mail). In a 1997 academic book on the bilateral relationship between Canada and Cuba, his tenure as Ambassador to Cuba is described as follows: "Of particular importance is Mark Entwistle ...A tireless and extremely talented negotiator, he is undoubtedly the most dynamic and successful Ambassador to Cuba during the revolutionary period." Prior to his service as Ambassador, Mark served for sixteen years from 1981-1997 as a professional Canadian diplomat. His Foreign Service career included assignments at the Canadian Embassies in Tel Aviv, Israel (1982-1985) and Moscow, in the former Soviet Union (1986-1989), where he was responsible for bilateral relations between Canada and the then USSR. Beginning in 1989, Mark acquired deep and extensive practical experience in government operations and communications, acting first as Media Spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs. In 1990, he was senior ministerial aide for Parliamentary Affairs to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, where he managed the relations between the Minister and all institutions of Parliament. In 1991, Mark was seconded from the Public Service to the Prime Minister's Office as Deputy Press Secretary responsible for foreign policy. Months later, he was appointed by the Prime Minister to serve as his Press Secretary and director of communications. In that position from 1991-1993, Mark was responsible directly for all aspects of the Prime Minister's relations with the media and the public communication of the policies of the Canadian federal government on all issues and across the full range of government departments and agencies. He was at the center of planning across government for all policy matters involving the Prime Minister, including national policy initiatives, budget, and financial issues, federal- provincial relations and four G-8 Summits, numerous other summit meetings with world leaders. From 1999-2000, Mark also served as Chief of Staff and senior communications advisor to the Leader of one of Canada’s main political parties and also a former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. As a former Fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, he co-authored the publication In the National Interest: Canadian Foreign Policy in an Insecure World. He is author of the concluding chapter “Canada-Cuba Relations: A Multiple-Personality Foreign Policy” in Robert Wright and Lana Wylie (eds.), Our Place in the Sun: Canada and Cuba in the Castro Era (University of Toronto Press, 2010) as well as the chapter “The Cuban Black Box: Understanding Why Cuba Does What It Does” in T.K. Hernández (ed.), The Cuba Interviews: Conversations on Foreign Investment and Economic Development (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). Mark writes and speaks frequently on international and Cuban affairs. He is a Director of ONE Global (Canada), the Canadian arm of the global movement to end extreme poverty and preventable disease, and The Belinda Stronach Foundation. He is also Senior Advisor to the Institute of World Affairs in Washington D.C. Mark is the recipient of the prestigious Saul Hayes Award for Human Rights of the Canadian Jewish Congress for his work in supporting the Cuban Jewish community. He obtained his B.A. from the University of Ottawa in 1979 and his M.A. degree in History from the University of Toronto in 1981. Mark works in English, French and Spanish as well as working Russian.