Alka Kothari

Member

Alka Kothari is a foreign affairs professional with more than 25 years of experience working at the intersection of democracy, development, and human rights. Her career has focused on election monitoring, international governance, and social and environmental accountability.

Alka spent decades monitoring elections in the former Soviet Union with the OSCE. She also served as a consultant at The World Bank; first with the Inspection Panel during the investigation of the Chad–Cameroon Pipeline Project, and later supporting social and environmental safeguard policies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Earlier in her career, she worked with non-governmental organizations on refugee rights and issues related to conflict diamonds.

She studied philosophy at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, and went on to pursue graduate studies in foreign affairs at New College, Oxford, and American University in Washington, DC. Of Indian origin and a Gujarati Jain, Alka is deeply committed to diplomacy and intercultural exchange. She brings these interests together through a private supper club focused on food diplomacy. She is currently working on a travel memoir about India as well as a new writing project.