Tunku Zain

Educated at the Kuala Lumpur Alice Smith School, and then Marlborough College, Tunku Zain went on to obtain his MSc in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics & Political Science. He then worked in the UK Houses of Parliament before moving to Washington DC to join the World Bank as a Public Sector Consultant. Upon returning to Malaysia, Tunku Zain worked at the United Nations Development Programme and the KRA Group before becoming a Research Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

In 2006, he co-founded the Malaysia Think Tank which evolved into Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) in 2010. He currently serves as Independent Non-Executive Director of Allianz Malaysia Berhad and Allianz General Insurance Company (Malaysia) Berhad, as well as advisor / patron to numerous educational and cultural organisations.

Since 2008 he has maintained a newspaper column: initially ‘Abiding Times’ in The Sun, then ‘Roaming Beyond the Fence’ in the Star and Sin Chew, and now ‘Conservatively Speaking Freely’ in the Malay Mail, Borneo Post and Oriental Daily.

An Eisenhower Fellow, he has been selected for various leadership programmes by the governments of Australia, France and the European Union.He is a Trustee of Yayasan Chow Kit, Yayasan Munarah, Jeffrey Cheah Foundation and Genovasi Foundation and committee member of several societies and associations, including the Squash Racquets Association of Malaysia; and a Royal Fellow of the National University of Malaysia.