Mark John Burke

Mark John Burke (born 18 September 1989) is a South African academic, author, venture capitalist and former politician. Burke was deputy chairperson of the African University Debate Council (Pan African Universities Debating Championship) and ranked as one of the top 5 public speakers on the continent in 2011. He formerly served as youth leader for the Congress of the People (South African political party) in the North West Province.
==Early life and education==
Burke was born on 18 September 1989 in the former Orange Free State (province). He attended North-West University in Potchefstroom, where he graduated with a dual BA and BSc Honours (cum laude) before going on to complete a joint master’s at the University of Cape Town and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where he studied under Professor Vincent Rijmen.
Burke obtained a second master’s of philosophy from Cambridge University on an Oppenheimer Scholarship. In 2020, he completed a DPhil, also at Cambridge University as a Mandela Rhodes Leverhulme Scholar.https://www.rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk/media/42910/1645-rhodes-annual-report-2018-4websi.pdf
In 2010 he was named as one of South Africa’s “100 Brightest Young Minds”. He was selected as the Golden Key International Undergraduate of the year in 2011, as well as winning a Mandela Rhodes Scholarship the following yearhttps://www.mandelarhodes.org/downloads/yearbooks/2012.pdf. 
While at the University of Cape Town, Burke rowed in the winning university boat at the National Rowing Championship. He also rowed for the men’s first boat at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
==Public career & Research==
Burke has been active in politics and activism since a young age, having founded the Potchefstroom Debate Society at 19. 
As an undergraduate, he served as the campus chairperson for the Congress of the People shortly after the founding of the political movement and was elected as the provincial youth leader and provincial delegate to the party’s national conference. In 2013, Burke left South Africa to study in the UK, where he joined the Liberal Democrats (UK). 
==Research and public service (2013–2017)==
Upon his return to South Africa he joined the Democratic Alliance. He would later serve as ward and Good Hope constituency finance chairperson. 
He also worked on international development assistance in West Africa for a policy advisory firm, Dalberg Global Development Advisors. During this time he co-authored several reports for the department of international Development’s UK Aid on impact investing across the continent.https://thegiin.org/assets/upload/West%20Africa/03%20Ghana%20Chapter.pdf He would go on to work for South Africa’s largest Venture Capital firm, Edge Growth, focussing exclusively on investments into black owned business such as RecoMed and Meerkat.
==Research and public service (2017–present)==
In 2017, Burke took a position teaching for the Saïd Business School at Oxford University, as well as undertaking to build out Edge Growth’s presence in the UK. 
During this time, he set up an arbitrage trading hedge fund, with operations in Canada, the UK, and Europe.
==Philanthropy==
In 2016, the Burke Scholarship was launched, a programme aimed at developing investigative journalism as part of the fourth estate defence of democracy.
The inaugural Burke Scholar has gone on to work for the leading South African daily newspaper, The Daily Maverick, while other scholars are working at the Mail & Guardian. 
Category:1989 births
Category:South African academics
Category:South African writers
Category:South African venture capitalists