UK Honors alumna wins 2023 Alumni Global Impact Award

At the Global Impact Award reception held on October 4, Ambassador Christine Elder ’89 accepted the 2023 Alumni Global Impact Award for recognition of her outstanding career. She is one of six awardees who were recognized in six different categories.

Elder graduated from the University of Kentucky Honors program with a bachelor’s degree in Germanic Language and Literature. She also has a master’s degree in international relations from The George Washington University.

Elder has spent 30 years in public service. From 2016 to 2020, Elder served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Liberia, where she was conferred the star of Africa, the highest honor bestowed upon a foreign citizen by the Republic of Liberia. She has also held positions as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Mozambique, and as cultural attaché in Germany and in Hungary. Her other Washington assignments include deputy coordinator for International Information Programs, serving as the senior most foreign service officer in the Office of the Inspector General, director for Southern African Affairs, and senior watch officer in the State Department’s Operations Center.

Elder currently serves as consul general at the U.S. Consulate General in Sydney, Australia. Prior to her assignment in Australia, she was responsible for representing the United States in New South Wales and Queensland. In recommending Elder for the Alumni Global Impact Award, Christian Brady, dean of the Lewis Honors College, for which Elder serves as an advisory board member, noted her ability to discern “how and when to use bureaucratic levers to balance risks and initiative, convert proposals into policy, promises into financial commitments, and secure positions for growing embassies. In Africa’s and Europe’s young democracies, she aided countries in transition — both in healing ethnic and political divisions and dealing with post-independence economic transitions.”