Parag Khanna is the leading next-generation voice on the future of global affairs. Named one of Esquire magazine's 75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century and at the top of Wired magazine's Smart List, Khanna is a columnist for CNN, contributing reportage from around the world, and a frequent guest host of CNBC, providing expert commentary on global economic trends and emerging markets.

 

He is currently a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, the country's most innovative think tank, where he directs the Roundtable on the Future of the World Economy and advises the US National Intelligence Council's Global Trends program. He is also a Senior Fellow of the European Council on Foreign Relations in London and the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, and an adjunct professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He co-directs the Hybrid Reality Institute, a global research and advisory firm providing insight into the implications of emerging technologies. In 2007, he served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a senior geopolitical advisor to U.S. Special Operations Forces, and was a foreign policy advisor to the Barack Obama presidential campaign. 

Khanna is the author of the international bestseller The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the 21st Century (2009), which has been translated into 15 languages and led to The New York Times Book Review hailing Khanna as a "geopolitical whiz kid." Fareed Zakaria, TIME editor and CNN host, describes The Second World as "a fascinating, colorful, and always intelligent tour through a new world." In The Second World, Khanna heralded China's arrival as a superpower, foresaw the political power of Asian and Arab state-capitalism and sovereign wealth funds, depicted the growth of today's thriving cross-emerging market trade patterns, predicted that Egypt and the Arab world were "ripe for revolution," and warned of the risks poor infrastructure pose to American competitiveness.

In How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance (2011), Khanna provides a bold yet viable roadmap to establishing a more resilient world order, one that incorporates governments, cities, corporations, and civic communities into a dynamic diplomatic system. This "dizzyingly informed world tour" (Fortune) "makes the pulse race" (Economist). Nassim Taleb called the book "visionary," and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt declared, "We need to pay attention to Parag's ideas."

 

In Hybrid Reality: Preparing for the Age of Human-Technology Co-Evolution, Khanna and his wife Ayesha lay out a vision for the unfolding era of technological disruptions that will re-shape economic, social, and political life. Khanna has been hailed as a "21st-century Alvin Toffler-style global futurist" for his remarkably prescient predictions of geopolitical changes and crises, and his insights into game-changing economic and technological breakthroughs that transform the world's balance of power. As director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, he develops leading-edge scenarios for governments and corporate clients around the world.

 

A prolific voice in international media, Khanna has been featured on CNN, BBC, PBS, Al Jazeera, CBS, and NPR. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, TIME, Forbes, Newsweek, Harvard Business Review, Businessweek, Foreign Policy, Quartz and many other print and online publications.

With his base in Singapore, Khanna travels widely around Asia to capture the geopolitical and economic dynamics of the world’s fastest growing region. He has advised many governments and companies understand commercial opportunities and geopolitical risks in Asia, as well as predicting how Asian governments and multinationals will increasingly flex their financial muscle abroad.

 

A noted adventurer, Khanna has travelled to more than 100 countries and speaks English, German, French, Spanish, Hindi, and basic Arabic, earning him recognition as one of the world's most informed sociopolitical experts. He was honoured in 2009 as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

A graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Khanna also attained a Master's from Georgetown's Security Studies Program and a PhD at the London School of Economics. Dr. Khanna has lectured widely at prominent universities around the world. He serves on the board of directors of Independent Diplomat and the New Cities Foundation, and the innovation advisory board of DBS Bank.