Initially, Warren was not particularly engaged with education at his local South-East London school, finding it more of a grind than anything else. Things changed when he heard a talk on gap years and the opportunity to spend time abroad. What started as a youthful interest in Japanese pop culture led to Warren pursuing a gap year volunteer placement in the Aichi Prefecture, Japan, where he split his time between working in a kindergarten and a care home.

Warren's Japanese was very basic at the time; he recalls trying to ask a passer-by where the closest post office was, only to see them flee in confusion. His improvement after only half a year of immersion in Japanese language and culture was so great that Warren was able to pursue his undergraduate studies at ICU, a liberal arts university in Tokyo in 2007, followed by his decision to study for an MPhil in Japanese Studies at the University of Oxford.
Returning to Tokyo after completing his Master's degree, Warren took a role at the British Council in Japan in 2013, visiting Japanese universities to encourage UK-Japan student exchanges and providing consultancy on international exchange programmes. Next, Warren joined the Asia Pacific Initiative, a widely respected think tank where he spent two and a half years as a project manager and Executive Assistant to the Chairman, Dr Yoichi Funabashi. Warren ran international seminars, programmes and events attended by international leaders in various fields, and wrote articles on behalf of Dr. Funabashi on Japanese socio-politico-economic issues, Asia-Pacific regional security and global governance for publications such as The New York Times, the Financial Times and The Washington Post. Most significantly, Warren led an international research project on Japan's soft power in the 21st century that produced the book, "Reinventing Japan: New Directions in Global Leadership," published in both Japanese and English.

Warren is the Founder and President of the official Oxford Alumni Club of Japan, now the largest UK university network in Japan with over five hundred members. He established a new Oxford-Japan Academia-Industry initiative to create fully paid internships and work placements in Japan for Oxford students, negotiating formal agreements with international companies including SoftBank Group, Recruit Holdings, Oliver Wyman, PWC and AXA Direct to offer over twenty-five positions per year. This project also received backing from the Japanese Embassy in the UK as an official event of the UK-Japan Season of Culture. Warren has begun to collaborate with representatives at other prestigious institutions such as the University of Cambridge to connect their students with Japanese firms.

Now into the second year of his doctorate at Oxford, Warren has already received over ten scholarships and awards, including the invitation to move from St Antony's College to Pembroke College to become a Tanaka Graduate Scholar. He has also secured several academic posts in Japan, as a Visiting Researcher in the Soft Power Programme at the Centre for Rule Making Studies at Tama University, part-time lecturer in the Global and Liberal Arts programme at Rikkyo University, and part-time lecturer in the Department of International Studies at Meiji Gakuin University. Warren was recently awarded a place on the UK Department for Education-funded scholarship Study China Programme to complete an intensive language and cultural immersion course at East China Normal University, Shanghai, during the summer of 2019.

Warren is the first British student of African-Caribbean descent to have obtained an advanced postgraduate research degree in Japanese Studies in the UK, and the first to be enrolled on a doctoral programme with a focus on Japan.

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