Hon. Dr Thiaga Rajan Palanivel (PhD, SUNY Buffalo, USA) is the Minister for Finance and Human Resources Management in the Government of Tamil Nadu, India. He also holds the portfolios of Pensions & Pension Benefits and Planning & Development of the Tamil Nadu Government.

Dr Rajan previously worked as an International Investment Banker for many years, in several trading, market sales, and management roles at Lehman Brothers (largely in New York), and Standard Chartered Bank (mostly based in Singapore) – where he last served as Senior Managing Director, Financial Markets, overseeing the sales of several fixed-income products globally.

Before banking, his career spanned Academia, Agriculture, Consulting, Manufacturing, and Research. Because of his global career and deep curiosity, Dr Rajan has travelled to about 60 countries across the major continents. His political and policy views are significantly shaped by his observation of both the diversity of cultures around the world and the universality of human values.

Dr Rajan earned a B. Tech (Hons.) in Chemical Engineering from NIT, Trichy, MS (Operations Research) and Ph. D. (Human Factors Engineering / Engineering Psychology) from the State University of New York, and an MBA (Finance) from the MIT Sloan School of Management.