Mark Bryan Manantan is the inaugural director of cybersecurity and critical technologies at the Pacific Forum in Honolulu, Hawai’i. At the Forum, he has established an extensive portfolio on technology and international affairs that spans regional and global projects, and Track 1.5 and Track 2 dialogues. His key initiatives include the Cyber ASEAN capacity-building project (2022-2024); US-Japan and the US-South Korea cybersecurity and critical tech cooperation (2021 – 2024), Trilateral Security Dialogue on AI: US, Japan, and Australia (2022 – 2024), and CONVERGE: Indo-Pacific Critical Tech Forum 2024: AI and Semiconductors (2023 – 2025). He also hosts the Indo-Pacific Current podcast.
Mr. Manantan is a member of UNESCO’s AI Experts Without Borders and serves on the institutional advisory board of the Australian National University’s Philippines Institute. Currently, he is a senior advisor and head of CI-ISAC International for the Asia Pacific, a visiting fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies at the Japanese Ministry of Defense in Tokyo, and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, National Cheng-chi University in Taiwan,
Previously he was a research consultant at the Asia Society Policy Institute, Washington D.C., Asia fellow at the Japan Foundation, and a research fellow at the Center for Rule-making Strategies, Tama University in Tokyo, Japan, and the East-West Center, Washington, D.C.
Before his career in technology and international affairs, he was a media and strategic communications executive at Havas and Grey Group managing global companies and organizations like Procter & Gamble, Wells Fargo, Aboitiz Equity Ventures, and UNICEF.
