M. Rajaretnam is currently the Director and Chief Executive of the International Centre Goa, India. Concurrently, he is also the Executive Director of the Asian Dialogue Society and is responsible for several of its projects including the drafting of the Asian Charter as well as the Human Security Project for the North East Region of India. He also manages the Building A Better Asia Young Asian Leaders Retreat programs for the Nippon Foundation of Japan that are held in Peking University and Goa annually, and is advisor to the Myanmar program at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He has held senior positions of responsibility in a number of organizations including the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (1993-95), Coordinator of the Singapore Institute of Pacific Economic Cooperation (SINPEC, 1993-95), and Secretary of Singapore-CSCAP (Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, 1994-96). In 1985 he established the Information & Resource Center (IRC) as a private “think tank” and consultancy that has worked on significant capacity-building activities and business-related work in various Southeast Asian countries. In the last 30 years he has dealt with many cultures and peoples in a direct way, traveled widely and constantly in most countries in Asia including North Korea, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, worked with the private sector, government leaders, politicians, scholars, the media, and the growing sector of non-governmental organizations, and foreign donor organizations.

Mr. Rajaretnam has been publisher and editor of ASEAN Forecast, Indochina Report, Vietnam Commentary and the Manila Report. He was also on the editorial board of several regular periodicals including the Manila-based literary journal, SOLIDARITY. His interests focus on the Southeast Asian region, the building of a Southeast Asian community and the initiation of regional dialogues. His primary activities in the last decade have been directed to the building of a Southeast Asian community. He has been exposed equally to economic, political, security and civilisational issues. He has demonstrated his concern for regional community building, narrowing the poverty gap, human resources development and meeting the challenges of the information age.