Ambassador Geeta Rao Gupta is the fourth Ambassador-at-Large for the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues at the U.S. Department of State and the first woman of color to hold the position. She previously served as Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation and Senior Advisor to Co-impact, a global collaborative philanthropy for systems change. While at the U.N. Foundation, she founded and served as Executive Director and later as Senior Advisor of the 3D Program for Girls and Women.
Ambassador Rao Gupta has also chaired numerous boards including the Global Advisory Board of Women Lift Health, an initiative to promote women’s leadership in global health and served as a member of WHO’s Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee for Health Emergencies, the Board of UBS Optimus Foundation and the Advisory Board of Merck for Mothers. She also served as a Commissioner for the Lancet-SIGHT Commission on Health, Gender Equality and Peace.
Previously, Ambassador Rao Gupta served as Deputy Executive Director, Programmes at UNICEF and prior to that as a Senior Fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Earlier, Gupta served as President of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) for more than a decade. In the past, she also served on several boards, including the Global Partnership for Education; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health; and the MAC AIDS Fund. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including InterAction’s Julia Taft Award for Outstanding Leadership, Harvard University’s Anne Roe Award and Washington Business Journal’s “Women Who Mean Business” Award. Ambassador Rao Gupta holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Bangalore University and an M.Phil. and M.A. from the University of Delhi in India.