Biden Nominates Indian American Rachna Sachdeva Korhonen as Ambassador to Mali
- She is the third Indian American nominated as ambassador in over a month.
President Joe Biden has nominated Rachna Sachdeva Korhonen as Ambassador to the Republic of Mali, the White House announced on April 15. A career foreign service officer, she currently serves as a deputy assistant secretary and executive director of the combined Executive Offices of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.
Previously, she was the Consul General and Principal Officer of the U.S. Consulate in Dhahran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She also led the management section of the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka and, in Washington, and served as a special assistant to the Under Secretary for Management.
Among her other assignments, she was the Supervisory General Services Officer and Senior Human Resources Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the political chief of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kirkuk, Iraq. She also had assignments at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and at the U.S. Consulate General in Mumbai, India.
Sachdeva Korhonen earned her B.S. from Empire State College. She speaks Hindi, French, Finnish, and Arabic.
She is the third Indian American nominated as ambassador in over a month by Biden. Last month, diplomat Puneet Talwar was named as the president’s choice as America’s ambassador to Morocco and political activist Shefali Razdan Duggal was nominated as envoy to the Netherlands.