Heidi Arola

Heidi Arola is director of global partnerships and director of the Purdue-India partnership at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. She is an international education professional with 20 years of experience building strategic bilateral and multilateral partnerships at the highest levels of academia, government, and the private and nonprofit sectors. Arola is a board member of the Indiana India Business Council and a cofounder and cochair of the Big Ten Academic Alliance international partnerships peer group. From 2002 to 2015, Arola served as a U.S. foreign service officer in Montreal, Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, and Recife, culminating her State Department career as chief of the department's EducationUSA network. In that capacity, she managed multi-million-dollar budgets and grants and oversaw 400 educational advising centers that promote U.S. higher education in 170 countries. Arola earned her MS in foreign service from Georgetown, where she was also editor in chief of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. She has a BA from Tulane University in New Orleans.