The IAEA Board of Governors elected by acclamation Ambassador Heidi Alberta Hulan as the Chairperson of the IAEA’s Board of Governors for 2020–2021. Her one-year term commences today. She replaces Ambassador Mikaela Kumlin Granit of Sweden.
Ambassador Hulan is Canada’s Permanent Representative to the international organizations in Vienna and Ambassador to Austria and Slovakia. She has served as the Governor of Canada on the IAEA Board of Governors since 2017.
Born in Ottawa, Canada, she is a career diplomat who joined Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in 1996.
Prior to taking up her current post, Ambassador Hulan worked in a variety of assignments in capital including Policy Advisor to the Foreign Minister, Deputy Director of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, Director of the Peacebuilding and Human Security Division, Director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Division, Director General of Non-Proliferation and Security Threat Reduction, and most recently as Director General of International Security Policy.
Abroad, Ambassador Hulan has served as Minister Counsellor and Head of the Political Section at Canada’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York (2005–2009) and was Deputy Permanent Representative of Canada to NATO (2010–2013).
Following the conclusion of the Nuclear Security Summit process in Washington, DC in 2016, she served as the inaugural Chair and Convenor of the 33-member Nuclear Security Contact Group.
More recently, Ambassador Hulan chaired the UN High Level Expert Preparatory Group on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, the consensus report of which was presented to UN Member States by the UN Secretary General in August 2018.
Ambassador Hulan is a past recipient of both the Minister’s Citation for Foreign Policy Excellence and the Deputy Minister’s Award of Excellence.
She holds a Joint Honours BA in Philosophy and Political Science from McGill University in Montreal and speaks English and French.
Ambassador Hulan is married and has one child.