Kamakshi Wason is the Global COO and Executive Director of Academic Programmes at the Tillotoma Foundation, where she leads the organisation’s global academic strategy, institutional partnerships, research initiatives, international outreach, and programme development. She also heads the Foundation’s New Delhi Office, overseeing engagements with universities, think tanks, diplomatic missions, multilateral institutions, policy organisations, and other strategic partners in India and abroad. A practitioner of Track 2 Diplomacy, she works to strengthen dialogue, academic diplomacy, and people-to-people engagement by bringing together policymakers, diplomats, scholars, military leaders, parliamentarians, civil society representatives, and subject experts. She has played a central role in conceptualising and organising high-level international conferences, strategic dialogues, diplomatic roundtables, policy forums, and capacity-building programmes. As Executive Director of Academic Programmes, she has designed and led executive education initiatives, international diploma courses, policy workshops, research internships, and specialised training programmes in diplomacy, foreign policy, strategic affairs, international relations, and public policy.
Her research interests span diplomacy, geopolitics, defence and strategic affairs, international security, climate change, South Asia, Central Asia, the Indo-Pacific, international trade, economic diplomacy, and emerging technologies in global governance. Her work adopts an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the links between strategic competition, regional security, economic development, environmental sustainability, technological change, and international cooperation. Ms Wason has authored and contributed to research papers, policy commentaries, analytical essays, and opinion pieces published across national and international newspapers, journals, policy platforms, and academic publications. She is also an experienced moderator, speaker, and academic convenor, having chaired and addressed numerous national and international forums on geopolitical change, India’s foreign policy, regional security, climate diplomacy, economic statecraft, and global governance. Beyond her policy work, she is deeply committed to research culture, youth leadership, and international academic collaboration, mentoring students and early-career researchers through research training, policy writing, leadership initiatives, and academic exchanges. Her professional vision is centred on knowledge diplomacy and the belief that effective international cooperation is strengthened through sustained engagement among governments, academia, civil society, and policy institutions.
