Nirupama Rao was the 28th Foreign Secretary of India, only the second woman to hold this position. She also served as Ambassador to both China and the United States, and High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. In 2017, she was named a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2017, and is a Visiting Scholar at leading institutions including Brown University and Columbia University. Ambassador Rao has more than 1.3 million followers on Twitter. She is recognized for her work as a cultural diplomat as the Founder of the South Asian Symphony Orchestra and for her books of poetry.