Social Justice Advocate Geeta Rao Gupta Nominated as Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues
- She is currently a senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation and senior advisor to Co-impact, a global collaborative philanthropy for systems change.
President Joe Biden has appointed Indian American Geeta Rao Gupta for the post of Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues at the Department of State. She is currently a 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, the gender expert and advocate for equity and social justice founded and served as executive director of the 3D Program for Girls and Women.
Additionally, she serves as co-chair of the WHO Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee for health emergencies, chairs the Global Advisory Board of WomenLift Health, a new initiative to promote women’s leadership in global health, and serves as a member of the Board of UBS Optimus Foundation and of the Advisory Board of Merck for Mothers. She also serves as a commissioner for the Lancet-SIGHT Commission on Health, Gender Equality and Peace.
From 2011 to 2016, Rao Gupta served as deputy executive director at UNICEF and for a year before that was a senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Before that, for over a decade, she was the president of the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW).
Previously, she was a visiting scholar at Stanford University and served as co-chair of the Gender-Based Violence Task Force of the World Bank.
She has been a member of several boards and has received many awards, such as Harvard University’s Anne Roe Award and the Washington Business Journal’s “Women Who Mean Business” Award. She received a Ph.D. in Psychology from Bangalore University and a Master of Philosophy and Master of Arts from the University of Delhi in India.