Simon Tay

Simon SC Tay LL.B Hons (National University of Singapore) LL.M (Harvard) is a public intellectual and adviser on in political and economic issues. He teaches international law and public policy at the National University of Singapore and is concurrently chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), an independent think tank. The SIIA is one of the top 15 think tanks in Asia according to a 2009 University of Pennsylvania study, and it also represents Singapore in the influential ASEAN-ISIS network of regional think tanks. For 2009, he is with the Asia Society in New York, as Schwartz Fellow, directing a Task Force report on US-Asia relations under the Obama administration.

From 2002-08, he chaired the National Environment Agency, the country‟s major agency for environmental protection. Prior to that, he was a Nominated Member of the Singapore Parliament (1997 – 2001) and led public consultations on Singapore in the 21st century, the national concept plan, and the Singapore Green Plan 2012. He has also directed the Singapore Volunteers Overseas, the country‟s “peace corps”. In 2006, he received the Public Service Medal (Pingat Bakti Masyarakat, PBM), a Singaporean National Day award.

He has been a visiting professor to teach at Yale, Harvard Law School and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He has spoken or chaired events for international business meetings including the World Economic Forum. He has featured in the international media, including the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Channel NewsAsia and Financial Times and has a regular column in TODAY newspaper in Singapore. He also has advised multinational corporations on regional business investments and on sustainability and environmental issues.

He was a Fulbright scholar (1993-94) at Harvard Law School, where he won the Laylin prize for the best thesis in international law. In Jan 2000, the World Economic Forum (Davos) named him a “global leader of tomorrow”. In 2002, he was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship in the USA. He is also an award winning writer with five books of stories and poetry.