CHAN Heng Chee | SUTD Honorary Professor (Former Chair)

Biography

Ambassador Chan Heng Chee is Ambassador-at-Large with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore and SUTD Honorary Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities in the Singapore University of Technology and Design. In November 2019, she took up the position of Chairman of the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute. She is Deputy Chairman of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), a Member of the Science of Cities Committee and National Research Foundation (NRF).

She is a member of the Presidential Council for Minority Rights.

Ambassador Chan is a Member of the Yale-NUS Governing Board. She is a Trustee of the University of the Arts Singapore.

She was elected the Global Co-Chair of the Asia Society in December 2017 and is a Council Member of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

She is a member of the Council on Urban Initiatives, a collaboration by LSECities, London School of Economics, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, and UN-Habitat. She joined the governing board of SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), Sweden in 2021.

Previously, she was Singapore’s Ambassador to the United States and Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations with concurrent accreditation as High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador to Mexico.

Ambassador Chan received a number of awards including The Public Administration Medal (Gold); The Meritorious Service Medal; The Distinguished Service Order; Honorary Degrees of Doctor of Letters from the University of Newcastle, Australia and the University of Buckingham (United Kingdom); and an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Warwick (United Kingdom).

When Ambassador Chan left Washington at the end of her appointment, she received the Inaugural Asia Society Outstanding Diplomatic Achievement Award, the inaugural Foreign Policy Outstanding Diplomatic Achievement Award 2012 and the United States Navy Distinguished Public Service Award.

Ambassador Chan holds a B.Soc.Sc (Hons) First Class from the National University of Singapore, an M.A. from Cornell University and a Ph.D from the University of Singapore.