Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa

Ms. Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa has been a distinguished career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) who joined IFS in 1979 and retired in December 2015.

She was the first Indian woman to be appointed Ambassador to the Gulf State of Qatar and later Japan. She has also been India’s Ambassador to Sweden, Latvia and Republic of Marshall Islands. Earlier, she served twice in China, besides stints in Switzerland and Netherlands. She was instrumental in the active promotion of India’s economic interests in the areas of trade, technology, investments and energy security. She has held the charge of Joint Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, responsible for Indian relations with the United Nations and its agencies, including development programmes of UNICEF, ILO, UNDP, WHO etc. in India.

She had worked extensively on issues relating to human rights, disarmament and environment, and continues to have an abiding interest in these subjects.

A graduate from Madras University, she has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and post graduate degree in English Literature. Hailing from the state of Kerala in India, but domiciled in Tamil Nadu, Ms. Wadhwa speaks English, Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi. She also has conversational skills in Mandarin.