The Board of Trustees of the Ananta Aspen Centre, a not-for-profit think tank, has unanimously elected Ambassador Satinder K Lambah, former Special Envoy of the Prime Minister of India, as its new chairman.
The decision was made at the Board of Trustees meeting of the Ananta Aspen Centre held last evening in New Delhi.
Lambah succeeds T N Ninan, Chairman, Business Standard Limited.
Lambah was the Special Envoy of the Prime Minister of India from 2005-14 with the rank of Minister of State from 2010 onwards.
He was the Co-Chairman of the Task Force on National Security 2011 - 2012, and the President of Association of Indian Diplomats in 2005.
He was a Convener of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) in 2004-05 and the President of the Federation of Indo-German Societies in India from 2005-2014.
Lambah was the Special Envoy of the Government of India for Afghanistan and led the Indian delegation to the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in 2001-02. In 2001, Lambah chaired a Committee on the Re-organization of Ministry of External Affairs and Indian missions abroad.
Lambah has served in several missions abroad, including as the Ambassador of India to the Russian Federation, Federal Republic of Germany, Hungary and High Commissioner of India to Pakistan and Consul General of India, San Francisco.
He was Deputy Secretary General of the 7th Non Aligned Summit held in Delhi in 1983 and later Coordinator of the Commonwealth Heads of Governments meeting in India.
His specialisations include economic diplomacy and dealing with India's neighbours.
He opened the Indian Embassy in Bangladesh after liberation. He has been involved in many successful economic ventures. For instance, the first Export of an Indian Car (Sale of Maruti Cars) took place when he was Ambassador in Hungary.
India's largest investment ever upto that time of over USD two billion in Sakhalin-I was made in 2001 when he was Ambassador in Russia. For this, in March 2015, he was conferred the "Urja Energy Security Award".
During his tenure as Consul General of India in San Francisco (1989-91), he was conferred a "Trustees' Citation" by the University of California, Berkeley in 1991 for his initiating, coordinating, and spearheading the campaign which generated over USD two million in a short span of four months for Indian Studies, resulting in the creation of two Chairs of India Studies, a bi-annual lecture by a distinguished scholar from India, and an annual scholarship at the Graduate School of Journalism at U.C Berkeley. Lambah Co-chairs high-level Track II Dialogues of the Ananta Aspen Centre with the US, China and Turkey, and was the Co-chair of the India-Singapore Strategic Dialogue for five years.
He is married to Nilima Lambah, author of "A Life Across Three Continents - Recollections of a Diplomat's Wife".
Ananta Aspen Centre is an independent and not-for-profit organisation that focuses on leadership development and open dialogue on important issues facing Indian society, to help foster its transformation.
The Centre engages civil society, business, governments and other stakeholders on issues of importance to India's development and national security.
