Policy ABC Talk: Overview

Alejandro Reyes is adjunct professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration (PPA) and senior fellow at the Centre on Contemporary China and the World (CCCW) at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). He is also scholar-in-residence at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center and adviser to the research and learning group AI Safety Asia. From 2019 to 2023, he was adjunct professor and director of knowledge dissemination at the Asia Global Institute at HKU, where he managed the digital journal AsiaGlobal Online and other policy research. Prior to that, he was for two years senior policy adviser to the assistant deputy minister for Asia Pacific and set up and led the Asia-Pacific policy planning unit at Global Affairs Canada, the Canadian foreign ministry, which initiated the drafting of Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, launched in 2022. He had previously served in the department in 2002 as a senior policy adviser to the Canadian foreign minister, working on the G8 and a review of Canadian foreign policy. From 2007 to 2017, he was an associate professor in the PPA Department at HKU. A Hong Kong-based independent consultant from 2001 to 2017, he worked with several foundations and international organizations including the G20 Business Summit, the Clinton Global Initiative, the World Economic Forum and the US-Asia Institute. He has edited or written several publications including a book on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a history of Manila at the end of the Japanese Occupation, an Asian investment guide, and a survey of the financial services sector in Asia by McKinsey & Co. He began his professional career as a journalist with Asiaweek magazine, part of Time Inc, where he worked from 1988 to 2001 in Hong Kong and Singapore. Born in the Philippines and a citizen of Canada, he was educated at Harvard University and the University of Oxford and in 2000 was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters by Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina.