Amb. Shivshankar Menon is an Indian diplomat, who served as National Security Adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from 2010-2014. His long career in public service spans diplomacy, national security, atomic energy, disarmament policy, and India’s relations with its neighbors and major global powers. He currently serves as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi. He is the author of “Choices: Inside the Making of Indian Foreign Policy” published by the Brookings Press and Penguin Random House in 2016.

Amb. Menon has previously served as Foreign Secretary of India from 2006-2009, and as Ambassador and High Commissioner of India to Israel (1995-1997), Sri Lanka (1997-2000), China (2000-2003) and Pakistan (2003-2006). He was also a member of India’s Atomic Energy Commission from 2008-2014. A career diplomat, he also served in India’s missions to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Geneva and the United Nations in New York.

Amb. Menon is a Distinguished Fellow of Brookings India; Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore; Member, Board of Trustees, International Crisis Group; and, a Distinguished Fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute, New York. He has been a Richard Wilhelm Fellow at the Center for International Studies at MIT and Fisher Family Fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard University. In 2010, he was chosen by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the world's Top 100 Global Thinkers.

He attended the Scindia School, Gwalior and St. Stephens College of the University of Delhi, where he studied ancient Indian history and Chinese.