Nirupama Rao

Nirupama Rao
Indian Ambassador to the United States
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 August 2011
Preceded by	Meera Shankar
Indian Foreign Secretary
In office 31 July 2009-31 July 2011
Preceded by	Shivshankar Menon
Succeeded by	Ranjan Mathai
Personal details
Born	(1950-12-06) 6 December 1950 (age 62) Malappuram, Kerala, India
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Diplomat

Nirupama Menon Rao (Malayalam: നിരുപമ മേനോന്‍ റാവു; born December 6, 1950) is a 1973 batch Indian Foreign Service officer and the current Indian Ambassador to the United States since August 2011. Prior to this assignment, she had served as the Foreign Secretary of India for a period of 2 years.

In July 2009, she became the second woman (after Chokila Iyer) to hold the post of Indian Foreign Secretary, the head of the Indian Foreign Service. In her career she has served in several capacities including, Minister of Press Affairs in Washington, Deputy Chief of Mission in Moscow, stints in the Ministry of External Affairs as Joint Secretary (East Asia), (External Publicity) making her the first woman spokesperson of the External Affairs Ministry, Chief of Personnel, Ambassador to Peru and China, and High Commissioner to Sri Lanka.

Early life and education

Nirupama Rao was born in Malappuram, Kerala. Her father was in the Indian Army. She did her schooling from various cities like Bangalore, Pune, Lucknow, Coonoor. She did her BA (English) Honors in Mount Carmel College, in Bangalore, in 1970, when it was affiliated with the Bangalore University. Later, she obtained her Masters degree in English Literature from what was then known as Marathwada University in Maharashtra. She topped the All India Civil Services Examination in 1973 and joined the Indian Foreign Service. Her sister, Surgeon Rear Admiral Nirmala Kannan is the 'Command Medical Officer' (CMO) of the Cochin based Southern Naval Command. She is married to Mr. Sudhakar Rao, an IAS officer whom she met while training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri academy in Mussoorie after they were both selected for the civil services. They are the parents of two sons.

Career

Nirupama Rao with Xinjiang Medical University President Halmurat Wupur

On completion of her training in India, she served in the Indian Embassy in Vienna (Austria) in the mid seventies. She did a stint as First Secretary in the Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka from 1981-83. During her early years in the Ministry of External Affairs, she specialized in India's relations with China, and was a member of the delegation of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi when he made his historic visit to Beijing in December 1988.

Rao was a Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University in 1992-93 where she specialized on Asia-Pacific Security.

She served in the Indian Embassies in Washington and Moscow as Minister and Deputy Chief of Mission, respectively. Her first Ambassadorship was to Peru with concurrent accreditation to Bolivia in 1995-1998. She became the first woman spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs in 2001. She was assigned to Sri Lanka as High Commissioner for India in 2004. In 2006, she became India's first woman Ambassador to China. She became India's Foreign Secretary, succeeding Shivshankar Menon, on August 1, 2009.

On December 21, 2010, Indian Government approved extension of Nirupama Rao tenure as India's Foreign Secretary till July 31, 2011.

Her work was very much appreciated during the evacuation of Indians at the time of the Libyan crisis. Among others, she used her Twitter account (@ForeignSecNRao) to regularly update the public about the evacuation. She has been appointed as Ambassador of India to the USA after completion of her tenure as Foreign Secretary.

Ambassador Rao was conferred the degree of Doctor of Letters (Honoris Causa) by the Pondicherry University at their Convocation in May 2012. She has also been named to the global list of the One Hundred Most Influential Women on Twitter by Foreign Policy.com

Writing career

She has written a book of poetry, named Rain Rising. Her poems have been translated into Chinese and Russian.