Prof. Kishore Mahbubani

Prof. Kishore Mahbubani has had distinguished careers in two different fields. Firstly, in the area of diplomacy, he served in the Singapore Foreign Service for 33 years, during which he has served in Cambodia, Malaysia, Washington D.C. and New York, where he served twice as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN and as President of the UN Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002. He was Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Ministry from 1993 to 1998.

Secondly, in the area of academia, he also served as the Founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy from 2004 to 2017. He was also the Founding Director and the first Dean of the Civil Service College in Singapore from 1992 to 1994.  In 2019, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which has honoured distinguished thinkers and leaders, including several of America’s founding fathers and presidents, since 1780.

Prof. Mahbubani has spoken and published globally. He has authored seven books. His latest book, Has the West Lost it?, was published in April 2018.

He was selected as one of Prospect magazine’s top 50 world thinkers in 2014 and as one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers in 2010 and 2011. In March 2009, he was listed by the Financial Times among the Top 50 individuals who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism, and in 2011 was described by Foreign Policy as “the muse of the Asian century”.

Keynote Speaker for:

Opening of NIHA LDP 2019