Our Story
A Practice Built on Careful Observation
Garuda Strategy was established in Bangkok in 2011 with a clear conviction: that risk management education works best when it respects the intelligence of its participants and the genuine difficulty of the subject.
Return to HomeFounded in Sathorn, Grounded in Practice
Garuda Strategy was founded by a group of risk practitioners who had spent years advising boards, conducting internal audits, and designing enterprise risk frameworks for organisations operating across South and Southeast Asia. What prompted the founding was a repeated observation: professionals taking on risk responsibilities were underserved by the training available to them.
Much of what existed was either theoretical — drawn from certification syllabi with limited connection to actual organisational life — or overly procedural, reducing the discipline to checklists and traffic-light charts. Neither served the thoughtful practitioner well.
The school was established in the Sathorn district of Bangkok, chosen for its accessibility and for the concentration of professional firms whose staff would benefit from the programmes. Over fourteen years of operation, Garuda Strategy has developed a distinctive pedagogy: considered, sequential, applied, and respectful of complexity.
What We Are Here to Do
Our Mission
To develop the analytical judgement, practical competence, and professional disposition of those who carry risk responsibilities — at every stage of their career.
Intellectual Honesty
We do not overstate what risk analysis can deliver. We teach the discipline as it actually works — with its limitations acknowledged and its genuine contributions understood.
Considered Pace
Programmes move at a teaching pace, not a content-delivery pace. Concepts are examined before they are applied. Questions are welcome and given proper attention.
Organisational Realism
Risk work takes place inside real organisations with competing priorities. Our teaching takes that context seriously and prepares participants to navigate it with skill.
The People Behind the Programmes
Each faculty member is a practitioner first. They bring experience from the field into the teaching room.
Somchai Kiatbundit
Founding Director & Lead Faculty
Spent eighteen years in enterprise risk and internal audit roles at major financial institutions across Thailand and Singapore before founding Garuda Strategy. His primary teaching area is risk governance and board-level risk reporting.
Nattaya Phromchai
Senior Faculty — Risk Systems & Culture
Consulting background in risk management system design, with particular focus on the organisational and cultural dimensions of risk practice. Has worked with firms in manufacturing, logistics, and professional services throughout the region.
Wiroj Lerdkiat
Faculty — Regulatory Affairs & Ethics
A former regulator with the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission, now in private practice as a risk and compliance advisor. Teaches the regulatory, legal, and ethical components of the Senior Stewardship Programme.
How We Maintain Programme Quality
Curriculum Review
Programme content is reviewed each cycle. Faculty bring current case material from their active consulting work. Outdated frameworks are retired rather than retained for familiarity.
Participant Assessment
Each programme includes assessed components — case analyses, reflective writing, or project work — that require genuine engagement with the material, not rote recall.
Post-Programme Feedback
Structured feedback from each cohort is reviewed by faculty. Where patterns of concern emerge, content or delivery is adjusted before the next intake.
Data Privacy
Participant information is held in accordance with Thailand's Personal Data Protection Act. Data is used only for programme administration and direct communication. It is not shared with external parties.
Partner Organisation Standards
Organisations hosting practicum engagements for the Senior Stewardship Programme are selected for their willingness to provide substantive access to real risk questions. We do not place participants in nominal roles.
Ethical Teaching Standards
Programmes address ethical questions directly, particularly in the Advisory and Stewardship levels. Faculty do not avoid difficult or contested issues in risk governance — they are treated as central to the work.
Risk Management Education in the Thai Context
Enterprise risk management in Thailand operates within a regulatory environment shaped by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bank of Thailand, and the Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, among other bodies. Organisations face compliance expectations that are genuine, but the deeper challenge — building a culture in which risk information flows honestly and is acted upon with judgement — is a leadership and organisational question, not primarily a regulatory one.
Garuda Strategy's programmes address both dimensions. The foundational course establishes the language and frameworks that allow risk conversations to be structured and productive. The practitioner-level programme turns to the harder organisational questions: how risk systems are designed to support rather than burden decision-making, and how reporting to boards and audit committees can be made genuinely useful rather than merely formal.
The Senior Stewardship Programme operates at the level of governance architecture — the design of risk oversight at scale, the relationship between risk and strategic choices, and the responsibilities of those who sit at the apex of an organisation's risk function. This programme draws on Thai and regional case material and incorporates direct engagement with a partner organisation.
For organisations considering sponsoring staff through a programme, or wishing to discuss group arrangements, we are glad to have that conversation directly. Corporate participation has been a consistent feature of each cohort, and we accommodate the scheduling and invoicing requirements that come with it.
Talk With Us About Your Situation
We are glad to discuss your professional background and the programme options that may suit you. There is no pressure attached to that conversation.
Contact Garuda Strategy