The NCS Chair of Governors, and Warden of New College, is Sir Robin Niblett. Until 2022, Sir Robin was Director and Chief Executive of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House, and prior to this was Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC. Currently, he is the Director of Ledwell Advisory and a member of the International Advisory Board of Brown Advisory, the US investment firm. He is a Distinguished Fellow of both Chatham House and the Asia Society Policy Institute and a Senior Adviser with CSIS. He is also a member of the Board of Overseers of the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. 

Robin has previously held policy advisory positions with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, and chaired the 2014 NATO Experts Group. A leading expert on the relations between Europe, the US, and Asia, he is the author most recently of The New Cold War: How the Contest Between the US and China Will Shape Our Century, which was published by Atlantic Books in 2024. In 2022, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael & St George for services to international relations and British foreign policy. He read Modern Languages (French and German) at New College as an undergraduate and returned there for an MPhil and DPhil in International Relations.