Dr Anoulak Kittikhoun is Chief Executive Officer of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) Secretariat. He leads the MRC Secretariat headquartered in Vientiane and its Flood and Drought Management Centre in Phnom Penh, to support the implementation of the Mekong Basin Development Strategy 2021–2030 and MRC Strategic Plan 2021–2025.

Prior to his appointment in January 2022 as the CEO, he led the MRC Secretariat’s Office of CEO as Chief Strategy and Partnership Officer from 2016. Before the MRC, he was an international staff of the United Nations Secretariat in New York, including the Department of Political Affairs and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Earlier in his career, he was a researcher at the Ralph Bunch Institute for International Studies, an adjunct professor of international relations at Brooklyn College of New York, and an advisor at the Permanent Mission of Laos to the United Nations. 

Dr Kittikhoun is the co-author of two books: River Basin Organisations in Water Diplomacy, and Small Countries, Big Diplomacy, and has published peer-reviewed book chapters and articles in leading journals such as Theory and Society, International Studies Review and Journal of Hydrology, on topics including the United Nations, conflict management, Lao PDR, and the Mekong. His article on the Lao revolution and geography won the Reinhard Bendix award from the American Sociological Association.