Meera Shankar

Meera Shankar joined the Indian Foreign Service in July 1973. She spent six years in the prime minister's office before moving to Washington as minister for commerce in 1991. She subsequently led the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and foreign ministry divisions responsible for South Asian regional cooperation and relations with Nepal and Bhutan. In 2002 she took responsibility for UN affairs and international security. ¹

After serving as ambassador to Germany, Shankar arrived in Washington in April 2009. In an interview that August she described an agenda extending beyond the civil nuclear agreement to trade, science and technology, energy, and environmental cooperation. She linked those priorities to economic recovery and India's need for a stable neighborhood. ^{1, 2}

Her Washington work also involved outreach to Latin America and the Caribbean. At the Organization of American States in February 2010, she explained India's expanding trade and investment in the region and discussed opportunities for closer engagement with representatives of member states. ³