Shivshankar Menon

Early life and education Shivshankar Menon hails from Ottapalam in the Palakkad district of Kerala. He comes from a family of diplomats; his father, Parappil Narayana Menon, served as the ambassador to Yugoslavia in his last days.

Menon's grandfather, K. P. S. Menon (senior), was India's first Foreign Secretary, while his uncle, K. P. S. Menon Jr., was the former Indian ambassador to China and the 15th Foreign Secretary.

Career Menon started his career in 1972 with the Indian Foreign Service. and Pakistan. He was appointed Foreign Secretary in 2006, and was the National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. He relinquished office as India's 4th National Security Advisor on 15 May 2014. He is also a Visiting Professor of International Relations at Ashoka University.

A major milestone of his career was the Indo-US nuclear deal, for which he had worked hard to convince NSG member nations along with Shyam Saran to get a clean waiver for nuclear supplies to India.

Menon joined the Brookings Institution (USA) as a distinguished fellow and also serves as chairman of the advisory board of the Institute of Chinese Studies based in New Delhi. He has been a Fisher Family Fellow at the Kennedy School, Harvard University 2015 and Richard Wilhelm Fellow at MIT in 2015. He was chosen to be one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” by Foreign Policy magazine in 2010.

He joined the Institute of South Asian Studies at National University of Singapore as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in November 2017.

Publications

Choices: Inside the Making of India's Foreign Policy. 2016. Brookings Institution Press. Penguin. India and Asian Geopolitics: The Past, Present. 2021. Brookings Institution Press.

Menon wrote "Choices: Inside The Making of Indian Foreign Policy" that was first published in 2016 and was based on his experience as National Security Advisor of India.

Personal life He is married to Mohini Menon and has a daughter and a son. His mother tongue is Malayalam and he also speaks Hindi, English, Chinese and German.

Honours