WASHINGTON -- The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars has appointed Ambassador Nirupama Rao as a Public Policy Fellow. She will be affiliated with the Wilson Center’s Asia Program. Ambassador Rao will spend three months in residence at the Wilson Center beginning in June 2017. She will be working on a book project on the India-China relationship and contributing to the Wilson Center’s activities on India, including its India in Asia initiative.

Ambassador Rao is a retired senior diplomat. Her four-decade-long diplomatic career included the posts of Indian ambassador to the United States and Indian foreign secretary. She was also India’s first female ambassador to China and its first female spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Following her retirement from public service, Ambassador Rao received an appointment as Meera and Vikram Gandhi Fellow at the India Initiative at Brown University. She has taught an undergraduate seminar at Brown called “India in the World.”

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars is the living, national memorial to President Wilson, created by Congress in 1968 and headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Wilson Center provides a strictly nonpartisan space for the worlds of policymaking and scholarship to interact. By conducting relevant and timely research and promoting dialogue from all perspectives, it works to address the critical current and emerging challenges confronting the United States and the world.