Up close & personal with Founder of Gift and author Chandran Nair

IT is difficult to pin down who Chandran Nair is, or to put in specific terms what he does for a living. Although born and having spent his teenage years in Kuala Lumpur, he is an internationalist. He is at home here in Malaysia, at peace in some remote Tibetan village and is able to thrive in any cosmopolitian city in Europe.

Professionally, much of his work and interests seem to revolve around social developments as he is a great believer in contributing to society, yet he neither considers himself an environmentalist nor a socialist. He helped build water and sanitation systems in poorer parts of the world and trained young people to be leaders. He founded a social think-tank in Hong Kong to advance thought leadership and was at one time, chairman of one of Asia's largest environmental consultancy. For more than 30 years, Chandran lived abroad - first in Britain where he studied chemical engineering, then in South Africa where he volunteered in development work building water and sanitation systems and living on a stipend.