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= Simon Conway = Simon Conway is an award-winning author and Director of Capabilities at The HALO Trust. He was made one of three co-Chairs of the global Cluster Munition Coalition and successfully campaigned for the 2008 international treaty that banned cluster bombs. He is married to Scottish radio and television news reporter, Sarah Smith.

Early Life
Conway was born in Sacramento, California in 1967. His father, Professor Sir Gordon Conway, is an agricultural ecologist and former President of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Royal Geographical Society. His mother is an artist and academic, who specialises in South East Asia. He went to school in England but lived in Lebanon and Thailand as a child.

Education
Simon studied English Literature at the University of Edinburgh and, after passing-out from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, served as an infantry officer in the British Army, seeing active duty with The Queen’s Own Highlanders (Seaforths and Camerons) in West Belfast.

Career
After leaving the military, Conway spent four years living and working in the Peak District and then the island of Islay in the Hebrides and completed his first novel Damaged, which was published by Canongate. The Literary Review described it as “the debut of a roaring and prodigal talent”.

In 1998, Conway joined The HALO Trust. He cleared landmines and explosive remnants of war on the K5 mine-belt in Cambodia and was subsequently involved in immediate post-conflict survey and clearance in Kosovo, Eritrea and Sri Lanka. He managed the clearance of the east bank of the Gumista River in the Abkhazia, a breakaway region of the Caucasus, destroying more than 5,000 mines in twelve months.

In 2004, Conway joined Landmine Action, later renamed Action On Armed Violence, and established explosive ordnance disposal projects in Western Sahara, Guinea Bissau and Liberia. In 2006, he was made one of three co-Chairs of the global Cluster Munition Coalition and successfully campaigned for the 2008 international treaty that banned cluster bombs. His 2006 report on the use of more than 4 million cluster sub-munitions in Southern Lebanon helped highlight the indiscriminate effects of the weapon.

In 2014, after two years on the board of The HALO Trust, Conway re-joined full-time as Director of Strategy, and has been at the forefront of establishing new methods and means of working, including remote management in Syria and Yemen and urban rubble clearance in Iraq and Libya.

He is a board member of Article 36, a not-for-profit organisation working to prevent the unintended, unnecessary or unacceptable harm caused by weapons, including lethal autonomous weapons.

Personal life
Simon married BBC broadcaster Sarah Smith in 2007. He has two daughters by his first marriage.