Biography — Chan Heng Chee
Discover the career and achievements of Ambassador Chan Heng Chee, a distinguished diplomat and academic shaping policy across Singapore and beyond.
Last updated 1 September 2026
Ambassador Chan Heng Chee Member, Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize Council Professor (Former Chair), Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities Singapore
Ambassador Chan Heng Chee is Ambassador-at-Large with the Singapore Foreign Ministry. She is Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities in the Singapore University of Technology and Design. In November 2019, she took up the position of Chairman of the ISEAS (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies)-Yusof Ishak Institute. She is Deputy Chairman of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), a Member of the Science of Cities Committee, National Research Foundation (NRF) , and a member of the Advisory Council on the Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data, Ministry of Communications and Information. She is also a Member of the Presidential Council for Minority Rights.
Ambassador Chan is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the National University of Singapore and a Member of the Yale-NUS Governing Board. She is Chairman of the Pro-tem committee to establish a university of the arts in Singapore.
She was elected the Global Co-Chair of the Asia Society in December 2017 and is a Council Member of the Asia Society Policy Institute.
She is a member of the Council on Urban Initiatives, a collaboration by UN-Habitat, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, and LSE Cities, London School of Economics. She joined the the governing board of SIPRI, Sweden in 2021.
Previously, she was Singapore’s Ambassador to the United States and Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations with concurrent accreditation as High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador to Mexico.
Ambassador Chan received a number of awards including The Public Administration Medal (Gold); The Meritorious Service Medal; The Distinguished Service Order; Honorary Degrees of Doctor of Letters from the University of Newcastle, Australia and the University of Buckingham (United Kingdom); and an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Warwick (United Kingdom).
When Ambassador Chan left Washington at the end of her appointment, she received the Inaugural Asia Society Outstanding Diplomatic Achievement Award, the inaugural Foreign Policy Outstanding Diplomatic Achievement Award 2012 and the United States Navy Distinguished Public Service Award.
Ambassador Chan holds a B.Soc.Sc (Hons) First Class from the National University of Singapore, an M.A. from Cornell University and a Ph.D from the University of Singapore.