Parag Khanna is Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. He is author of The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (Random House, 2008). During 2007 he was a senior geopolitical advisor to United States Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. From 2002-5, he was the Global Governance Fellow at the Brookings Institution, managing the World Economic Forum’s Global Governance Initiative, an independent, international project to assess the level of effort and cooperation among governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations in implementing the United Nations Millennium Declaration. From 2000-2002 he worked at the Forum in Geneva, where he specialized in scenario and risk planning. Prior to joining the WEF, Parag was a Research Associate at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, conducting research projects on terrorism, conflict resolution in Central Asia, U.S. policy towards South Asia and defense policy. He holds a Bachelor of Science in International Affairs and a minor in Philosophy from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, a Masters Degree from Georgetown’s Security Studies Program, and is earning a PhD in International Relations at the London School of Economics. He also studied at the Freie Universitaet Berlin.  

Having traveled in close to 100 countries, Parag is a member of the Explorers Club. He had been a Next Generation Fellow of the American Assembly (2007-8), Visiting Fellow at the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore (2006), Non-Resident Associate of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University (2004-5), and a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, India (2004). In 2002 he was awarded the OECD Future Leaders Prize. He speaks German, Hindi, French, Spanish, and basic Arabic.

Source: Parag Khanna