Vasuki Shastry

Author, ESG/Strategic Communications Expert

Vasuki Shastry is a Senior Advisor on ESG and strategic communications for several public and private sector firms and serves on the Advisory Council of Chatham House on the UK & The World Program. He was until 2019, the Global Head of Public Affairs and Sustainability at Standard Chartered Bank in London, a time of significant change for the financial sector in articulating and delivering ESG goals and on the role of business in protecting human rights.

Shastry also served on the Board of the UK-India Business Council and Asia House. In February 2019, he was appointed to serve as Commissioner of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). Shastry is a former Senior Fellow at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House. Prior to Standard Chartered, Shastry held senior communication and public affairs roles at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington D.C. and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). At the IMF, where Shastry joined as Asia Pacific spokesperson at the height of the Asian financial crisis in 1998, he was at the vanguard of managing crisis communications for many of the institution’s defining moments during the last two decades.

Shastry is also a published author. His first book, “Resurgent Indonesia – From Crisis to Confidence was published in 2018 and documents the remarkable rise of Indonesia” from failing state in the late 1990s into a vibrant, confident democracy two decades later. His second book – “Has Asia Lost It” Dynamic Past, Turbulent Future”, published in 2021, takes a sceptical look at the Asia Rising narrativel. A new book, on ESG and Business, will be published in the U.K. in  2023. Shastry is a regular contributor to The Guardian, Forbes Asia, Asia Global Online, Fortune, and the Atlantic Council. He divides his time between Washington D.C. and Dubai.