Thant Myint-U

Thant Myint-U is an award winning writer, historian, conservationist, and former advisor to the President of Myanmar. thantmyintu.com He was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the "100 Leading Global Thinkers" of 2013 and by Prospect Magazine as one of 50 "World Thinkers" of 2014. In June 2015 he was awarded the "Fukuoka Grand Prize", Japan's highest cultural prize and in May 2018 the "Padma Shri", one of India's highest civilian honours. He is the Founder and Chairman of the Yangon Heritage Trust, the Founder and Chairman of U Thant House, a Founding Partner of the Ava Advisory Group, and from 2012-2016 was a member of the (Myanmar) National Economic and Social Advisory Council. As a Special Advisor for the peace process he was part of the team that led negotiations towards the 2015 "Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement" between the Myanmar government and ethnic-minority insurgent armies. Thant Myint-U is a Myanmar national but born in New York City to Burmese parents in 1966, 'returning' to Burma for the first time when he was eight years old. He was educated at Harvard and Cambridge University, where he completed his PhD in history in 1996. He has served on three United Nations peacekeeping operations, in Cambodia and in the former Yugoslavia, as well as six years with the UN Secretariat in NY, including as the head of policy planning in the Department of Political Affairs. In 2004-5 he was the Principal Officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General responsible for the 2005 World Summit. Thant Myint-U taught modern history for several years as a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and is the author of three books, The Making of Modern Burma, The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma, and, most recently, Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia, which was short-listed for the Asia Society's Bernard Schwartz Book Award in 2012. thantmyintu.com