Kishore Mahbubani has dedicated five decades of his life to public service. In his 33 years as a Singapore diplomat, Kishore took on many challenging assignments, serving for example in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1973/74 during the war. He also served two stints as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN (1984-1989 and 1998-2004). He also held the position of Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1994 to 1998. He was also conferred the Public Administration Medal (Gold) by the Singaporean Government in 1998.

Kishore had an equally illustrious career in academia. He was appointed the Founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in August 2004. Despite his heavy administrative duties, Kishore proved to be a prolific author. He has published eight books, including Can Asians Think? and Has China Won?.

Kishore has received global recognition for his intellectual contributions, having been listed several times in the list of top global thinkers by Foreign Policy and Prospect Magazines. The citation for the US Foreign Policy Association Medal he received in June 2004 said: “a gifted diplomat, a student of history and philosophy, a provocative writer and an intuitive thinker.”

Kishore has held positions in several globally significant committees. He was the founding chairman of the nominating committee of the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize (2009 to 2019). He has participated in the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos twenty times, serving also in several WEF committees. In April 2019, he was the second Singaporean to be elected as an honorary international member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which has honoured distinguished thinkers, including several of America’s Founding Fathers, since 1780.

Cheng Huan Q.C., S.C. was educated in Malaysia, Singapore, and the U.K. (in London and at Cambridge University). He was called to the English Bar (Inner Temple) in 1969. In 1971 he was awarded a Diploma in International Law from Cambridge University. He holds an LL.B. degree from Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he also completed a thesis on the legal aspects of boundary disputes between China and the Soviet Union. The mentors for his legal education at Cambridge University were the distinguished international lawyers Professor Lauterpacht and Sir James Fawcett (a distinguished judge of the European Court of Human Rights and the head of Chatham House). His tutors at Cambridge included Professor D.W. Bowett (the author of ‘The Law of International Institutions’) and Professor R.J. Jennings (the author of ‘The Acquisition of Territory in International Law’).

Before commencing his career at the Bar Cheng Huan devoted a few years to journalism and was an Assistant Editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, Associate Editor of Asiaweek, and China correspondent for The Guardian newspaper of the U.K. He travelled extensively in China and wrote extensively on that country’s affairs.