President Joe Biden has named Indian American career diplomat Kamala Shirin Lakhdhir, who formerly served as ambassador to Malaysia, as ambassador to Indonesia.
The daughter of an Indian father and an American mother, Lakhdhir was most recently Executive Secretary of the Department of State, according to her profile released by the White House.
She has served as Executive Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
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Lakhdhir served as US Consul General in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has served as Director of the Office of Maritime Southeast Asian Affairs, which includes responsibility for US relations with Indonesia.
She also served as a Pearson Fellow in the House International Relations Committee’s Asia and Pacific Subcommittee, and the House Financial Services Committee’s International Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee.
Early in her career, she was Deputy Coordinator of the Taiwan Coordination Staff in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Other overseas assignments were in China, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia.
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Lakhdhir earned a BA from Harvard College and an MS from the National War College. She is fluent in Chinese and Bahasa Indonesia.
Lakhdhir’s father, Noor, immigrated to the US from Mumbai, to attend the University of California, Berkeley. He met Lakhdhir’s mother, Ann, while living at the International House in Manhattan for his MBA at New York University.
Lakhdhir’s “international career began as a child, as a result of her parents’ rich international background and family trips abroad,” she said in an interview published on the National Museum of American Diplomacy website.
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These experiences encouraged her to begin her career overseas as a teacher in China for two years after graduating from Harvard College in 1986. Lakhdhir also credited her upbringing as a key factor “in developing her perceptions of herself as a multiethnic woman.”
Her father, “a first-generation immigrant from South Asia,” was not too hopeful of “global political regimes,” and initially encouraged Lakhdhir and her brother to pursue career paths in science or engineering, she said in the interview.
She also recalled him being “sometimes hesitant to share his Indian culture with his children thinking it might create obstacles for them.” Her dad “made a decision early that his children were going to be American,” she added.
She largely credited her connection to her Indian heritage to her mother, who exposed her children to South Asian culture. She was also a role model for Lakhdhir, along with many other women supervisors and mentors she encountered at the Sta