Lakshmi Puri


Lakshmi Puri is a former Assistant Secretary-General at the United Nations and the former Deputy Executive Director of UN Women. Prior to her 15 year stint at the United Nations, she served as an Indian diplomat for 28 years, and was the India’s Ambassador to Hungary and accredited to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Education & Personal Life

Puri completed her Bachelor's degree in History from Delhi University and Master's degree in History from Punjab University.
She is married to Hardeep Singh Puri, who is an Indian politician and a former diplomat currently serving as the Civil Aviation Minister of India and Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in India. They have two daughters.

Career

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Puri joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1974 and served in Japan, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, and as Ambassador to Hungary and accredited to Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the Ministry of External Affairs headquarters in Delhi, she served as the Under-Secretary on the Japan and Korea desk and later as Under-Secretary on the Pakistan desk. She also served as the Joint-Secretary Economic Division and Multilateral Economic Relations for six years. She was active in negotiating India’s many bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral economic diplomacy initiatives such as the Look East Policy, Indo-ASEAN Dialogue Partnership, Indian-Ocean Rim Association, Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation as well as Group of 15.

United Nations

UNCTAD
She continued with her trade and economic policy work when she joined the United Nations in 2002 as the Director of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s flagship Division on Trade in goods, services and commodities. She became Acting Deputy Secretary-General of UNCTAD. From 2009 to 2011, she was Director of the United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States in New York.
UN Women
Puri was appointed Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director of the pioneering global entity for promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women - UN Women in 2011.

Awards

Lakshmi is the recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights, Novus Award for Championing the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Millennium Campus Award 2015.

Publications

Lakshmi is a published author of several reports and research papers.