Kishore Mahbubani
Member of the Board of Directors
Nationality: Singapore
Born: 1948
Skills and experience
Kishore Mahbubani began his career in 1971 as a diplomat with the Singapore Foreign Service, in which he served until 2004, with postings in Cambodia, Malaysia, Washington D.C. and New York. He served two postings as Singapore’s ambassador to the UN and as President of the UN Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002. Mr. Mahbubani was permanent secretary of the Singapore Foreign Ministry from 1993 to 1998. He served as dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore (NUS) from its founding in 2004 until end of 2017. He continues to be a professor in the practice of public policy at the NUS. He has spoken and has published extensively on geopolitical and economic issues. In 2013 the Financial Times chose one of his books, ‘The Great Convergence: Asia, the West and the Logic of One World,’ as one of the best books about economics in that year. His latest book, ‘The ASEAN Miracle,’ was published in March 2017. He has been a member of the Boards of Zurich Insurance Group Ltd and of Zurich Insurance Company Ltd since April 2015.
Committee membership
Remuneration Committee, Risk and Investment Committee
Other directorships within the Group
Zurich Insurance Company Ltd
External appointments
In September 2017 he was appointed non-executive chairman of the board of Aggregate Asset Management. Since January 2016 he has also been an independent director of the board of Wilmar International Limited, Singapore. In addition, he serves on boards and councils of several institutions in Singapore, Europe and North America, including Yale’s President’s Council on International Activities (PCIA), the University of Bocconi International Advisory Committee, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geo-economics, and as chairman of the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize Nominating Committee.
Educational background
Mr. Mahbubani graduated with a first-class honors degree in philosophy from the University of Singapore and an M.A. in philosophy from Dalhousie University, Canada, where he was also awarded an honorary doctorate.
