Geeta Rao Gupta


Geeta Rao Gupta is a leader on gender, women's issues, and HIV/AIDS who has been serving as Executive Director of the 3D Program for Girls and Women and Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation since 2017. She is frequently consulted on issues related to AIDS prevention and women's vulnerability to HIV and is an advocate for women's economic and social empowerment to fight disease, poverty and hunger.
Rao Gupta is former president of the International Center for Research on Women. She began working with ICRW in 1988 as a consultant, researcher, and officer, and headed the private, non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. from 1997 through April 2010. She stepped down to join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a senior fellow from 2010 to 2011. Appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, she served as Deputy Executive Director for UNICEF and the Vice Chair of the Board for the GAVI Alliance from 2011 to 2016.

Early life and education

Rao Gupta grew up in Mumbai and Delhi, India, and received her education from the University of Delhi and Bangalore University.
Rao Gupta received a Ph.D. in social psychology from Bangalore University, an M. Phil in organizational behavior from the University of Delhi, and a master's in clinical of psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of Delhi.

Career

While working toward her advanced degrees in social psychology, Rao Gupta worked as a counselor at a drop-in center in New Delhi and lectured in the psychology departments of several universities. At the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Rao Gupta worked with a team to develop the first women's studies curriculum for graduate students in India.
In the mid-1980s, Rao Gupta moved to the United States and began working at the International Center for Research on Women in 1988. She has held a number of positions with ICRW, including consultant, researcher and vice-president. In the 1990s, Rao Gupta headed a ground-breaking, 15-country research program that identified the social and economic roots of women's vulnerability to HIV infection. Rao Gupta became president of ICRW in 1996.
Rao Gupta currently serves as co-convener of the Social Drivers Working Group of aids2031, an international initiative commissioned by UNAIDS to chart a course for a global response to AIDS over the next twenty-five years. She served as co-chair of the U.N. Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Youth Employment and from 2002 to 2005, she co-chaired the U.N. Millennium Project's Task Force on Promoting Gender Equality and Empowering Women.
In 2016, World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan appointed Rao Gupta as member of the Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee for the WHO Health Emergencies Programme. From 2016 until 2017, she co-chaired the World Bank’s Global Gender-Based Violence Task Force; the group was launched by World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim to strengthen the institution’s response through its projects to issues involving sexual exploitation and abuse. Since 2019, she has been a member of the Lancet–SIGHT Commission on Peaceful Societies Through Health and Gender Equality, chaired by Tarja Halonen.
Rao Gupta is often sought by the development community and media, and has been quoted by the Washington Post, The New York Times and USA Today, as well as other national and international news sources. Her expertise is in gender mainstreaming, women’s health, HIV and AIDS, women’s economic empowerment, private sector roles in development, strategies to empower women and advance gender equality, and women and poverty.

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