Lakshmi Puri

Lakshmi Puri was the youngest entrant into the Indian Foreign Service. After representing India abroad in key bilateral and multilateral diplomatic assignments for 28 years, including as Ambassador to Hungary and Bosnia Herzegovina, she served at the United Nations for 15 years in various leadership capacities: as Director of the flagship  International Trade Division of UNCTAD, later as Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, and as the founding Deputy Executive Director of UNWOMEN. She thus contributed to the UN's major projects on peace and security, sustainable development, climate change, human rights, and humanitarian action. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the Indian Association of International Studies (IAIS) and a recipient of the prestigious Eleanor Roosevelt Prize for Human Rights, among others. She is also a visiting professor at the South Asian University, New Delhi.