once a diplomat, always a diplomat

Justin Petrone • Sep 04, 2023 • 6 min read

Estonian e-⁠resident Alistair Starling has seen good and bad times. He's been orphaned, beat cancer, and endured divorce. He's always stood up, dusted himself, and got back on with it.

The hard things in life don't stop Alistair; he's a survivor and he's been striving to make a living since he was just a kid growing up on the streets of Cambridge in England in the 1980s. It imbued in him a thirst for new adventures and opportunities as well as a fascination with how people think.

"I've had a lot of stuff happen to me in my life," says Alistair.

"Because of that, I've always been interested in what makes people tick. And I have also never stopped working since I left home."

He actually kicked off his career as a designer, studying industrial design and technology and ergonomics, and eventually gaining an MA from the University of Cambridge. The talents he learned to apply as a designer have helped him throughout his career, which has seen him pivot from the business and marketing world into being head of investment in Italy for UK Trade and Investment, a gig he held down in his twenties, before embarking on a career as a diplomat for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where he continued to work for eight years.

Though Starling no longer is employed as a diplomat, he admits that he continues to move in the circles of diplomacy. "You know, you never really leave," Alistair remarks. "An ambassador told me the other day in London, you are not an ex-diplomat, you are a former diplomat."

Alistair has in recent years decided to parlay his experience as a diplomat into a new company. Called European Diplomats, the company markets itself as a digital government affairs agency and offers a variety of services, such as relationship building between the government and private sector, and vice versa. "We can help the government reach out to people who aren't in government," says Alistair. "We can do business-to-government and government-to-business."

He gives as an example a project where the government of Cyprus wanted to talk to representatives of fintechs based in London, and European Diplomats arranged the meetings. European Diplomats has also worked with edtech companies that want to engage governments across Europe. Other services advertised include policy influence, where European Diplomats will help partners engage policymakers and stakeholders; the tracking and monitoring of policy developments; and targeted marketing and communication campaigns. European Diplomats uses AI solutions to improve its performance, given the sheer amount of data it must handle.

Still, technology is no substitute for good old-fashioned networking, which to Alistair and the team at European Diplomats is second nature. "We try to get out there a lot," he comments.

"A good diplomat integrates with the locals, the foreigners, and crosses the border back and forth all the time. We do use a bit of AI, but you do have to break bread, or have a cup of tea."

Alistair currently splits his time between Hamburg, Germany, where his children live, the UK, and Tallinn, Estonia. He is a UK and German citizen, and recently became an Estonian e-⁠resident in part so he could more easily manage European Diplomats as a European business. He says he became acquainted with Estonia and its e-⁠Residency program through his work with the University of Cambridge, where he worked in business development and government sales in selling English exams. Given his background both in the business and government sector, he says he was impressed with the e-⁠Residency program and the technology underpinning it.

Obtaining e-⁠Residency and running his company as an Estonian business made perfect sense.

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"One thing I noticed early on in life, starting out as an entrepreneur, becoming a British diplomat, and doing everything else, is that you have to stay on top of your tack, either way," says Alistair. He notes that both the government and private sectors need to stay on top of new technologies, and that for him, the e-⁠Residency program represented that, especially because of the encryption technology for certifying secure digital signatures using a state-issued identity card.

"I immediately realized this was high tech and that they knew what they were doing," he says. "This was not a JPEG signature posted into a PDF."

Brexit obviously caused a seismic shift for Alistair that prompted him to take German citizenship, for instance, but also because British and European firms more than ever need the services that European Diplomats offers. "I have helped Remainers and Leavers," he notes of the Brexit experience. European Diplomats has methods for handling public and private sector clients, and to map out their respective needs, as well as to monitor legislation that will affect their activities.

Another catalyst for the company was the COVID-19 Pandemic, Alistair notes. In fact, the company was put together in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, when competitors could not outpace the nascent firm with their travel budgets, as all travel ceased during the lockdowns.

"The pandemic leveled the playing field, and we went out there and found new customers," remarks Alistair. "We were able to get a foothold because of that, and it worked out brilliantly."

With European Diplomats up and running as an Estonian company thanks to Alistair's e-⁠Residency, the team has been quick to rack up new partnerships and case studies. He highlighted in particular a relationship with the Ambassador Partnership LLP, a consultancy of more than 40 senior diplomats from 15 countries that makes their networks available to others.

"This has been great, because these are people who used to be my bosses," notes Alistair. "Now they are helping out on a freelance basis for the projects we are working on," he says.

European Diplomats is also running the Future of Education Consortium in Cambridge, where for Alistair, it all started out a long time ago. But who is Alistair really? A marketing team leader? A former diplomat?

Alistair says that in his core, he is still the designer he once studied to be.

"I have design thinking," he says. "It's that ability to look at a problem from all different sides, to go for a walk, to come back, to let it incubate in your subconscious." It's that knack for finding other angles that has helped him best serve clients for European Diplomats, Alistair maintains.

"I like being connected to real people, who actually care about what I am doing and are supportive."