Professor Asha Singh Kanwar
President & Chief Executive Officer
Commonwealth of Learning
(Burnaby, BC, Canada)
Professor Asha Singh Kanwar became President and Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) on June 1, 2012. She has served COL for 12 years, first as an Education Specialist – Higher Education and Policy and then as its Vice President for six years.
Before joining COL, Professor Kanwar was a consultant in open and distance learning at UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education in Africa (BREDA) in Dakar, Senegal. She has over 30 years of experience in teaching, research and administration.
Professor Kanwar received the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) Prize of Excellence in 2009. In 2014, she received the AAOU Meritorious Service Award for outstanding contributions in the areas of open and distance education. She has been awarded honorary doctorates by two universities. Effective September 2015, she was elected as a member of the ICDE Executive Committee for a four-year term.