Alun Evans was, for over 30 years, a civil servant in the United Kingdom government. He spent four years as the most senior adviser (Principal Private Secretary) to both Conservative and Labour Education Secretaries and then, from 1998-2000, he worked at No.10 Downing Street as Head of Strategic Communications to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

He subsequently worked for the Deputy Prime Minister (John Prescott) as Head of Resilience and Crisis Management. From 2012-2015 he was Director of the UK Government’s Scotland Office during the period of the referendum on Scottish independence. From 2015-2019 he was Chief Executive of the British Academy, following which he completed his PhD on the history of Private Office at Queen Mary University of London, supervised by Lord Hennessy. Since 2021 he has been a writer, strategist and political consultant. He is an expert on many aspects of the British government, including the support systems for Prime Ministers, crisis management, and issues related to Scottish independence.

Anne-Marie Slaughter is the CEO of New America and the Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. From 2009-2011 she served as the director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State, the first woman to hold that position.

Prior to her government service, Dr. Slaughter was the Dean of Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School) from 2002–2009 and the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at Harvard Law School from 1994-2002. She has written or edited seven books, including “The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World”, “Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family”, and “The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World. She is also a frequent contributor to a number of publications, including The Atlantic, the Financial Times, and Project Syndicate. In 2012, she published “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” in The Atlantic, which quickly became one of the most-read articles in the history of the magazine and helped spark a renewed national debate on the continued obstacles to genuine full male-female equality.

She is married to Professor Andrew Moravcsik; they have two sons.

Dr Ang Swee Hui is the Deputy Permanent Secretary (Professional) and Senior Consultant in Emergency Medicine at the Ministry of Health, Brunei Darussalam.  Following his postgraduate specialist training in Emergency Medicine, Dr. Ang under the United States Fulbright Scholarship, embarked on a Masters of Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health where he focused on health policy and management. This was followed by training on leadership as well as on executive decision-making, organisational and systems thinking at the INSEAD Business School in their Executive Masters of Business Administration program. Dr. Ang’s clinical and administrative career has been linked to the SARS (2003) global outbreak and the H1N1 (2009) and COVID-19 pandemics. In this panel discussion, he will share his experiences of leadership and governance during health crises.

Outside of work, Dr. Ang enjoys travelling with his friends and family. He is determined to visit a new city or a new country every year but recognises that the forces of nature or another pandemic could easily disrupt his plans.

Mr. Bhaskaran is a Partner of the Centennial Group, a strategic advisory firm headquartered in Washington, DC. As Founding CEO of its Singapore subsidiary Centennial Asia Advisors, he coordinates the Asian business of the Group which provides independent economic research on Asian political and macroeconomic trends for investment institutions, government agencies, multilateral institutions and companies with interests in Asia, leveraging off 40 years of studying Asia.

Mr. Bhaskaran is also Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies in Singapore where his main interests are in analyzing macroeconomic policy frameworks in Singapore.

Prior to Centennial, Mr. Bhaskaran held senior positions at Société Générale’s Asian investment banking division where he supervised Asian economic and investment strategy analysis and was a member of the Executive Committee, in charge of Asian equity research. In 12 years with the firm, Mr. Bhaskaran helped to establish its business presence in Southeast Asia and South Asia, while also helping to develop the firm’s highly-rated equity and economic research. Prior to that, Mr. Bhaskaran worked for the Singapore government, supervising a team that prepared strategic political and economic assessments of Asia for senior Singapore government officials.

Mr. Bhaskaran holds a range of other positions. In terms of public service, he served as Chairman of a high-level government committee reviewing the regulation of moneylenders in Singapore in 2014–2015. He is also a Member of the Competition Appeals Board, in Singapore. In addition, he is a Member of the Regional Advisory Board for Asia of the International Monetary Fund; a Council Member of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA); Vice-President of the Economics Society of Singapore; and an advisor to the Asia Foundation.

Mr. Bhaskaran also serves on the boards of several companies whose businesses span the ASEAN region including CIMB Investment Bank (a subsidiary of CIMB Bank, Malaysia’s second-largest bank and which operates across ASEAN), Japfa Ltd (listed in Singapore) and Luminor Capital.

Mr. Bhaskaran was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge University where he earned an MA (Cantab) and at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where he obtained a Masters in Public Administration. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Melissa Low is a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions. She previously worked at the Energy Studies Institute, NUS where she carried out research projects on a range of energy and climate issues of concern to Singapore and the region. She has participated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP) for over a decade and is an active sustainability thought leader, authoring, publishing and presenting at various forums.

She is the Designated Contact Point for NUS’s accreditation to the UNFCCC and serves on the nine-member Steering Committee of the Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organisation (RINGO) Constituency under the UNFCCC. She is also a Member of the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP) Long Term Aspirational Goal Task Group (LTAG-TG). Melissa holds an LLM in Climate Change Law and Policy (with distinction) from the University of Strathclyde, an MSc in Environmental Management and a BSocSci (Hons) in Geography from NUS. For her Master’s thesis on past and contemporary proposals on equity and differentiation in shaping the 2015 climate agreement, Melissa was awarded the Shell Best Dissertation Award 2013. She is currently pursuing a PhD part-time at the NUS Department of Geography.

In 2021, Melissa was conferred the NEA EcoFriend Award and the Public Service Medal (Pingat Bakti Masyarakat) for her contributions towards environmental sustainability, climate change awareness and impact on youth. She serves as Chair of the Climate Action SG Alliance, is an Advisory Committee Member for the MSE SG Eco Fund, a Council Member of the 16th and 17th National Youth Council and a Committee Member of the Speak Good English Movement. She is also the Chief Curator of the National Youth Council’s Young ChangeMakers Programme and a panellist on the Speak Good English Movement Programmes Evaluation Panel.