Kevin Rudd currently serves as Global President and CEO of Asia Society in New York. He returned to lead Asia Society in March 2026 following three years as Australia’s Ambassador to the United States under the Trump and Biden Administrations. He previously served as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010 and as Foreign Minister from 2010 to 2012, before returning as Prime Minister in 2013.
Rudd is also Founding President of the Asia Society Policy Institute, a “think-and-do tank” focused on global engagement with Asia, and the Founding Chair of its Center for China Analysis. He has published two books on China and U.S.-China relations, On Xi Jinping (2024) and The Avoidable War(2022).
Rudd is proficient in Mandarin Chinese, having graduated in Chinese language and history from the Australian National University. In 2022 he was awarded his D.Phil. from Oxford University for his dissertation on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ideological worldview.
Rudd is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. He holds honorary positions at other major institutions including the Atlantic Council; the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington; the Paulson Institute in Chicago; Chatham House in London; the Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Foundation in Berlin; Sciences Po and the Friends of Paris Agreement in Paris; the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra; and the Stephen A. Schwarzman Education Foundation. He is co-chair of the National Apology Foundation, an Australian charity focused on Indigenous reconciliation, and a trustee of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.
