Rep. Pramila Jayapal Is Pushing Biden To Be More Progressive

April 7, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

Indian American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, one of the top leaders of the progressive movement in the US Congress, has been in the back and front, effecting changes in a Democrat-controlled government after a decade of the party sharing power with Republicans.

Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, pushed President Joe Biden to push further on issues including student debt and insfrastructure bill, but said he overall has done “really well” on progressive issues.

After the passage of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package in mid-March, Jayapal has been preparing to reintroduce her Medicare for All Act. The central question for Jayapal and the left is how far Biden is willing to go. Biden doesn’t support Medicare for All—which is one of Jayapal’s signature policies—and he’s more moderate on most economic issues than Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whom Jayapal endorsed in the presidential primary. Nor does Biden so far support eliminating the filibuster, the Senate rule that effectively requires 60 votes to pass most legislation, which Jayapal and other progressives want to scrap.

But Jayapal says she has never been interested in replicating the antagonistic relationship between the right-wing House Freedom Caucus and Republican leadership that divided the GOP starting in 2015. Instead of acting as an “opposition” arm, she says she wants to be a “proposition” one: proposing the most progressive ideas possible and framing them in ways that can persuade her colleagues—and the President—to support them.

She says that model worked for Biden’s COVID-19 relief legislation. The American Rescue Plan looked a lot like what progressive members wanted, and Biden got there in part because of the careful negotiating by people like Jayapal.

Congresswoman. Jayapal, 55, who was born in India and came to the U.S. to attend college at Georgetown, got her start in politics as an activist in Seattle advocating for immigrants who experienced discrimination after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She built the largest immigrant-rights organization in Washington State, formed diverse coalitions, and sued George W. Bush’s Administration over its deportation of Somali immigrants.

She has said that experience taught her that even tragedies can be opportunities for change. But after years of agitating from the outside, Jayapal is a bona fide insider. After two years in the Washington State senate, she was elected to Congress in 2016, and she spent her first years fighting President Donald Trump at every turn. Now, as the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, she is one of the most influential officials of the Democrats’ left flank, and she has become a primary conduit between President Joe Biden and those in his party who think he’s an overly cautious centrist. Her journey from activist to powerful legislator was aided by an approach that melds progressive beliefs with pragmatic style—a combination that has won her respect from both Democratic camps.

Jayapal has kept in close contact with House and Senate leadership, and her team spoke to the White House legislative-affairs staff almost daily, she says. When a $15 minimum-wage increase fell out of the package because of Senate rules, some Democrats considered withholding their votes entirely. Jayapal helped persuade those members to support the deal, and it passed almost entirely along party lines. “Progressives have been sort of pushed to the margins so often in politics that I think we may have gotten used to that,” Jayapal says. “And so people are very inclined to say, ‘Oh, this happened again—we didn’t get everything we wanted.’” But she taught her colleagues to realize, “We should take the win.”

It’s the strategy Jayapal plans to pursue on other policies—while still trying to bring Biden further left behind the scenes. Biden called Jayapal after the relief package passed to thank her for her help, she says, and while she thanked him for his leadership on the law in return, she also told him she still wants to see the minimum wage increased.

“This is not a normal time. We’re trying to act like it’s normal,” Jayapal said. “I have only limited tolerance for a Republican party that wrings its hands and talks about unity and moving forward. We had an insurrection where their leader of their party incited that insurrection and many of them continue to support him.”

Health care is an important area to Jayapal. She co-chaired the health care unity task force that Biden and Sanders established last summer, and she wants Biden to adopt the proposals they agreed to, including lowering the Medicare eligibility age and adding aggressive drug-pricing powers. “I have raised it now to everyone that I’ve had the opportunity to speak with,” she says.

She knows none of her goals is going to be easy to accomplish, and time is short, with Republicans gunning to take back the House in 2022. But she is energized, and during difficult days she draws on the lessons from those early years of her career defending immigrant rights.

Biography Of Last Travancore Ruler Silent On His Dewan’s Machinations

April 7, 2021April 7, 2021 Vishnu MakhijaniCulture, Education, Profile 0

A biography of the last Maharaja of Travancore that attempts to provide an “authentic” account of his accession and his legacy is, however, silent on the shenanigans of his Dewan, Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar, to retain the independence of the province in 1947 and his deal with the British to export the states valuable mineral resources, while the author obfuscated on the two issues in an interview with IANS.

Opinion is divided over whether the Dewan should only be seen as a wily strategist trying to position his state globally by leveraging its mineral resources — monazite sands in Travancore were said to be exceptionally rich in thorium and uranium. The other view was that he was manipulative, feisty and virtually ran the state and dominated the ruler, IANS had reported in November 2020.

“The bottomline, though, was that he was sharp and prescient enough to realise that the rare earth material was a strategic resource that would give Travancore a leg up in directly dealing with western powers, bypassing the Indian state, at a time when they were trying to build their arsenal against the backdrop of the Cold War. Hence, in its efforts to stay independent, it was expected that the British would be benign towards him and Travancore because of the thorium deposits,” the IANS story said.

Veteran editor Sandeep Bamzai’s book “Princestan, how Nehru, Patel and Mountbatten made India”, revealed for the first time the full story of how Jawaharlal Nehru scuppered Ramaswami Aiyar’s plans for Travancore’s independence on the back this strategic power as the ambitious Dewan worked on a deal with Lord Wavell, the Viceroy.

Thus, the question that was posed to Aswathi Thirunal Gouri Lakshmi Bayi, the niece of Travancore’s last Maharaja, Sree Chithira Thirunal, and the author of the book “History Liberated” (Konark) was: There are plenty of references to CP Ramaswami Aiyar but the book is silent on his attempts to compel the Maharaja to opt for Independence and his pact with the British to export a valuable mineral.

The answer: Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Did Not compel the Maharaja to opt for independent Travancore. There are quite a lot of references on independent Travancore in the book itself, so I would request the interested party to go through it. Such an important decision, which is a moot decision, a fundamental decision, affecting the very existence of Travancore, such an important decision can never be one-sided. And to say that Sir CP compelled is also wrong. Whatever very important decisions were taken were taken after much care, after much thought and mutual discussion. It was not a dictatorship or of somebody sitting and just ordering about. It is not like that at all. It (topic) is a very huge area, and I have to my best ability dealt with it in the book.

“I have not gone too much into detail about the valuable mineral export etc, and I did not try to also because maybe did not occur to me at the time, that is one aspect of it. If it had maybe I would have included it. Secondly, the book was becoming quite voluminous even as it is. Somehow I think it did not strike me perhaps. I have no real explanation for that,” Lakshmi Bayi added.

The author was also silent on the road ahead after a Supreme Court judgement, in the wake of a decade-long battle, giving the erstwhile royal family a greater say in the running of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, considered one of the richest in the world because of the treasures it holds, and how this wealth could be utilised in a fruitful manner.

“I do not wish to respond to questions relating to the temple or whatever the wealth that it possesses, or its administration – all those things are not part of this book. Only one correction is regarding ‘treasure’. ‘How can the temple’s treasure’- treasure is a misrepresentation because whatever is a treasure, maybe I am wrong, if I’m wrong I may be forgiven and corrected. Treasure is normally found underground, or at least it is something which is stumbled upon, accidentally, nobody knows about it, and it comes as a huge surprise or whatever it is. Here, that the temple had this wealth was very much known. If it is treasure then the state can claim part of it. This (the temple vault) is not treasure, it is wealth. That is the difference. There is a difference in the nuances in wealth and treasure, it is not just nuances, the dictionary meaning of the two are different as well,” Lakshmi Bayi replied.

Still, “History Liberated” would be of interest to the lay reader as it provides a peep into the past of the Travancore royal family, which traces its lineage to the Chera dynasty that has its roots in the early centuries of the Common Era.

The last Maharaja, Sree Chithira Thirunal (1912-1991), had ascended the throne in September 1924 when he was just over 11-years-old (after his maternal great uncle Sree Moolom Thirunal passed away), but the reins of the kingdom were placed in the hands of his aunt, the Senior Rani Setu Lakshmi Bayi, who ruled the kingdom as Regent till he would come of age, i.e. after he turned 18.

However, this set off a tug-of-war in the royal household, between the two factions – one belonging to the Senior Rani Setu Lakshmi Bayi and the other to the Junior Rani, Setu Parvathi Bayi (Sree Chithira Thirunal’s mother). There were thinly concealed attempts to prolong the Regency by the faction related to the Senior Rani, by portraying the young Maharaja as mentally unfit to rule, to the British colonial powers who would take the final call on whether to invest Chithira Thirunal with full powers. There were also three alleged attempts on the life of the young prince.

However, the plans fell through after Chithira Thirunal proved his intelligence and ability to govern during a meeting with the then Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, who appreciated the young Maharaja’s mental acumen and declared him fit to rule. Chithira Thirunal was invested with full powers as king in November 1931.

The author then details some of the major steps taken by the young Maharaja – like the epoch-making Temple Entry Proclamation Act in 1936, a major social reform that won praise from Mahatma Gandhi himself. The Act opened up the doors of Hindu temples to all castes, doing away with the earlier system of barring those from lower castes from entering the temples.

Chithira Thirunal also set up Travancore University in 1937, launched the Sri Chitra Tirunal Medical Centre, which even today is a premier medical institute in Kerala, the Travancore Bank- which later became the State Bank of Travancore – and launched a host of other reform measures to help his people.

Chithira Thirunal was the Maharaja of Travancore till August 1949, after which he was appointed Rajpramukh of the united states of Travancore and Cochin. He had signed the Instrument of Accession in August 1947, along with the 500 plus other princely states. His role of Rajpramukh ended with the birth of Kerala state in 1956.

“Many people have been for quite some years asking me to write a book on Maharaja Chithira Thirunal, who was so dearly beloved to the people of this land, whose memory even today brings tears to the eyes of many of the senior people; even to the young people who have never known him, for many of them he is so special. But I had been putting it away due to a number of reasons; but as the years progressed, I felt that if we do not do something and write when we are able to, if in my generation somebody does not write there would be nothing very authentic about Maharaja, my maternal uncle, and his mother, Maharani Setu Parvathi Bayi, my grandmother,” the author told IANS. (IANS)

Dr. Suresh Reddy Picks Up Key Endorsements, Including The Sitting Mayor Of Oak Brook

April 1, 2021April 7, 2021 Ajay GhoshCommunity, Profile 0

Present Mayor of Oak Brook Dr. Gopal Lalmalani and Trustee Moin Saiyed of Oak Brook have been strongly supporting Dr. Reddy and have endorsed his candidacy, as his leadership skills will benefit the residents of the suburban town in Illinois.

“I am grateful to several key leaders of my hometown, Oak Brook, a suburb in the state of Illinois, including the sitting mayor and members of the governing body of Oak Brrook for endorsing and supporting my candidacy to be a Trustee of Oak Brook, as the elections to the town office draws close,” Dr. Suresh Reddy, Immediate Past President of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) said here today. “

Present Mayor of Oak Brook Dr. Gopal Lalmalani and Trustee Mr. Moin Saiyed of Oak Brook have been strongly supporting Dr. Reddy and have endorsed his candidacy, as his leadership skills will benefit the residents of the suburban town in Illinois. “Dr. Reddy also picked up the key endorsements of all the sitting Trustees, who are not running for re-election this year. They are: Trustee Michael Manzo, Trustee Asif Yousuf, Trustee Moin Saiyed, and Trustee Ed Tiesenga.

Dr. Reddy is among the six candidates running to be Trustees for the three openings that are being contested on April 6th, when the voters in the city will go to polls. Having a population of nearly 10,000 people, the city of Oak Brook is located 15 miles west of the Chicago Loop and is served by a network of major federal, state, and county roads including the Tri-State Tollway system, the East-West Tollway and the Eisenhower Expressway. One of the affluent communities in the nation, Oakbrook’s adjacent neighbors include the communities of Villa Park, Elmhurst, Lombard, Oakbrook Terrace, Westchester, Westmont, Clarendon Hills, Downers Grove, and Hinsdale.

Dr. Reddy comes with immense experiences and proven leadership. Dr. Reddy grew up in the suburbs of Hyderabad in Southern India. A financial conservator, Dr. Reddy always had a passion for “uniting and bringing people together.” Recalling his childhood, the dynamic leader says, “It all started during my childhood with bringing neighborhood kids together to play “gully cricket” and also bringing people together in college to organize events, demonstrations, and educational tours. Bringing opposing parties to the table for resolving issues has always been my strong strength since my schooling days.”

Not being satisfied with his achievements as a physician and leader of the Diaspora Physicians group, Dr. Reddy says, “I always had a strong passion for bringing a positive outlook and giving back to the community. I got involved in several alumni activities and have facilitated to raise funds to build a million dollar alumni educational center for my Alma Mater.”

Dr. Reddy completed his advanced medical training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School and has stayed on Harvard Faculty for more than a decade where he had also served as Chief of Interventional Neuroradiology. Subsequently, Dr. Reddy and family moved to Chicago which has now become his home. “Now that I call Oak Brook my home, I would like to contribute and serve my community by participating in public service,” says Dr. Reddy.

What motivates him to take on yet another challenging role for the betterment of the community? “My mantra is: If you don’t lead, someone else will lead you. If you don’t pick the right leader, the wrong leader will pick you, and as my good friend US Congressman Raja Says, and if you are not on the table, you will be on the menu
” says Dr. Reddy.

He has devoted a greater part of his life to numerous initiates within the United States, in addition to serving his people back in India, As part of his community service, Dr. Reddy has facilitated and organized numerous health camps and workshops, with special emphasis on CPR training, obesity prevention in conjunction with Chicago Medical Society. During the Covid Pandemic, Dr. Reddy facilitated more than a hundred webinars and health awareness events. He facilitated honoring of more than 10,000 nurses who work selflessly in the line of duty against Covid in over 100 hospitals in over 40 states including Alaska. He led a campaign donating blankets to the needy during the last winter and would like to do the same this winter.

His wife Leela, who was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina has a Master’s Degree in Health Management and Policy. Previously, she was a Director of Network Health Boston, a HMO Health Plan in Boston prior to moving to Chicago. Their son, Rohun is currently doing his JD/MBA at Kellogg School of Management /Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University.

Committing himself to ensure and work tirelessly to keep Oak Brook a strong village, living up to its name as a model village around the nation, Dr. Reddy says, “We would like to continue and strengthen many programs and services the city offers to all sections of the people. More than ever, Fiscal conservatism and wise spending, has become the most important attribute for a financially secure future. Hence I request you to give me a chance to perform my public service with utmost integrity and dignity to the office.” For more details, pleaseemail: reddyforoakbrook@gmail.com

Biden Nominates Judge Rupa Ranga Puttagunta As Judge Of DC District Court

April 1, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

President Biden made history March 30, 2021, announcing his intent to nominate the first Asian American woman of Indian descent to the U.S. District Court in D.C., and the first Muslim to the New Jersey higher court.

“This trailblazing slate of nominees draws from the very best and brightest minds of the American legal profession,” Biden said in the White House press release. “Each is deeply qualified and prepared to deliver justice faithfully under our Constitution and impartially to the American people — and together they represent the broad diversity of background, experience, and perspective that makes our nation strong.”

The diverse slate of 11 candidates for judicial nominations includes Judge Rupa Ranga Puttagunta, the Indian-American nominee for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. She currently serves as an Administrative Judge for the D.C. Rental Housing Commission.
Prior to joining the Commission in 2019, Judge Puttagunta was a solo practitioner from 2013 to 2019, representing indigent criminal defendants in trial and on appeal. Before opening her own practice, Judge Puttagunta practiced family and appellate law at Delaney McKinney, LLP from 2012 to 2013.

While working on domestic relations matters in private practice, Judge Puttagunta also provided hundreds of hours of pro bono legal services by volunteering at D.C. Superior Court’s Family Court Self-Help Center and Attorney Negotiator Program and representing victims of domestic violence in D.C. Superior Court.Judge Puttagunta began her legal career as a law clerk for Judge William M. Jackson of the D.C. Superior Court from 2008 to 2010, as well as the Senior Judges of the D.C. Court of Appeals from 2010 to 2011. She received her J.D. from Ohio State Moritz College of Law in 2007 and her B.A. from Vassar College in 2002.

Judge Zahid N. Quraishi is being nominated to the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Quraishi, who was born in New York City to parents of Pakistani origin, is currently a United States Magistrate Judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, a position he was appointed to in 2019.Prior to his appointment, Judge Quraishi was a partner at Riker Danzig where he chaired the firm’s White Collar Criminal Defense and Investigations Group and served as his firm’s first Chief Diversity Officer.

Before joining Riker Danzig, Judge Quraishi served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey from 2008 to 2013.Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney’s office, Judge Quraishi served as an assistant chief counsel at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.He also served as a military prosecutor and achieved the rank of Captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, deploying to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004 and 2006.

Judge Quraishi received his J.D. in 2000 from Rutgers Law School – Newark and his B.A. in 1997 from John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Earlier in his career, Judge Quraishi worked in private practice and clerked for Judge Edwin H. Stern, of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, from 2000 to 2001.

According to news reports, Senate hearings for these nominees is expected to begin in April. With the 50-50 party representation in the Senate, it may be a tough task to get the nominees confirmed. Among the presidential nominations, 10 are for Federal Circuit and District Court judge posts, and one is for Superior Court Judge for the District of Columbia. The nominations announced on Tuesday also include three African American women and a Muslim American. If confirmed by the US Senate, Judge Puttagunta would be the first Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) woman to serve on the US District Court for the District of DC, the White House said.

AAPI Congratulates Dr. Vivek Murthy After He Is Confirmed By Senate As US Surgeon General

April 1, 2021April 1, 2021 Ajay GhoshHealth, Profile 0

(Chicago, IL: March 27th, 2021) “We congratulate Dr. Vivek Murthy on his confirmation with bipartisan support by the United State Senate on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2021 for the second time as the Surgeon General of the United States,” Dr. Sudhakar Jonnalagadda, President of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) said here today.

Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, who as U.S. Surgeon General under President Obama had served as the United States Surgeon General and advocated a “healthier and more compassionate America,” was confirmed last week by the US Senate with seven Republican Senators joining the 50 Democrats, with 57-43 votes in the Senate, giving him bipartisan support. While Dr. Vivek Murthy says ending the coronavirus pandemic is his top priority, he’s also raised concerns over a relapsing opioid overdose crisis. “I’m deeply grateful to be confirmed by the Senate to serve once again as your surgeon general,” Murthy said in a statement. “We’ve endured great hardship as a nation over the past year, and I look forward to working with you to help our nation heal and create a better future for our children.

While offering AAPI’s whole hearted support in his efforts to lead the nation out of the Covid pandemic and opioid crisis, Dr. Jonnalagadda thanked President Joe Biden for placing his trust in Dr. Murthy, a member of AAPI to be America’s top doctor.
“The appointment and now the confirmation by the US Senate of Dr. Murthy, including other experienced and competent senior officials to the US Health Department, will help round out Biden’s team charged with addressing the pressing COVID-19 crisis, that has taken over 500,000 American lives,” Dr. Sajani Shah, Chair of AAPI BOT said.

While describing the leadership of Dr. Murthy as America’s Doctor, which is “cementing of the reputation of physicians of Indian origin have across America,” Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, President-Elect of AAPI, that represents over 100,000 physicians of Indian origin in the United States, said, “We are proud of Dr. Vivek Murthy and his many accomplishments and look forward to working together in his efforts, as the nation and the entire world seeks to find best possible solutions to tackle the pandemic that has taken the lives of millions of people around the world.”

Lauding Dr. Murthy “who has been a key coronavirus adviser to President-Elect Biden, regularly briefing him on the pandemic during his campaign and the transition,” Dr. Ravi Kolli, Vice President of AAPI said, “Dr. Murthy was part of Biden’s public health advisory committee as the pandemic first took hold in the US and has been serving as a co-chair of the President-elect’s Covid-19 advisory board during the transition. His ethics, quiet leadership style and impeccable credentials make him the smart choice for this leadership role.”

“Dr. Vivek Murthy represents the next generation of Indian American physicians,” Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, Secretary of AAPI said. “Dr. Murthy was America’s youngest-ever top doctor, and he was also the first surgeon general of Indian-American descent, when appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014. Now that he has been confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Murthy will play a key role in the administration’s response to many daunting healthcare issues, including the pandemic that has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.”
“Having a wide range of experiences and passion for science-based approach, Dr. Vivek Murthy will bring in new perspectives to the many healthcare issues that require immediate attention and concrete action plan,” said Dr. Satheesh Kathula, Treasurer of AAPI. Offering fullest cooperation from the Indian American Physician community, he said, “We at AAPI, look forward to working closely with Dr. Murthy and his team to end this deadly pandemic.”
Dr. Murthy 43, has said Americans need a leader who works with the people for the progress of the country. As surgeon general under Obama, Murthy helped lead the national response to the Ebola and Zika viruses and the opioid crisis, among other health challenges.

Dr. Murthy’s commitment to medicine and health began early in life. The son of immigrants from India, he discovered the art of healing watching his parents – Hallegere and Myetriae Murthy – treat patients like family in his father’s medical clinic in Miami, Florida.
“I am proud of our community of Indian physicians for all the progress that we have made over the years, and I know that AAPI has been a critical force in making this process possible. The advice you shared and assistance you kindly offered were important pieces of this journey,” Dr. Vivek Murthy, stated in a letter to Dr. Jayesh B. Shah, a past president of AAPI, who along with AAPI’s Legislative Affairs Chair, Dr. Sampat Shivangi and other senior leaders of AAPI had led several delegations to US Senators, lobbying for his confirmation in 2014, when he was appointed by President Obama.

While expressing pride at the confirmation of Dr. Murthy, Dr. Jonnalagadda pointed out to US President Joe Biden’s remarks, describing the Indian American physician to be the US Surgeon General as a “renowned physician” who could help guide Americans safely out of a still ranging coronavirus pandemic. For more details on AAPI, please visit: www.aapiusa.org

Village of Lincolnwood community comes out in support of Jesal Patel in the Mayoral Race

April 1, 2021April 1, 2021 Asian Media USACommunity, Profile 0

Lincolnwood IL: A wave of excitement engulfed the Village of Lincolnwood since Jesal Patel declared his candidacy for the office of the Village Mayor. During the recent meet and greet held on March 25th, 2031at Holiday Inn, Skokie, IL 60077, many prominent members of Lincolnwood wholeheartedly expressed their support for Jesal Patel. Some of the distinguished guests invited at the event were Minal Desai (Skokie Park District Commissioner), Susan Patel (President IADO (Indian American Democratic organization), Harendra Mangrola Past President IADO, Babu Patel (Marsha), Bhavesh Patel and Babu Patel (Saahil), Nick Patel (LA Tan), Kiraan Shah, Gautam Patel, Ashok Patel, Kishor Patel, J P Patel, PC Sha, Bharat Liwani and Karim and Hannah Lakhani.

Susan Patel steered the entire event and thanked everyone who came to support Jesal. Nick Patel talked about the great work that Jesal has done since 2007 and extended his support for him in the current election. The guests also talked about how, under the leadership of Jesal and the Lincolnwood Alliance Party, Lincolnwood has been better able to navigate the challenging times during covid-19 pandemic and has seen a robust economic period. A special mention was made about how Lincolnwood Alliance was able to secure the financing necessary to initiate the first phase of the 10-year infrastructure improvement program with zero property tax increases. It also supported public and private partnerships, and new TIF districts to help spur development in Lincolnwood.

Jesal reminisced about spending his childhood in the Village of Lincolnwood and expressed his love for the village. Jesal’s father Babu Patel, who is a very well-known community leader, urged everyone to vote for Jesal to make Lincolnwood prosperous and a safe place to live. One of candidates for the office of trustee, Mohammed Saleem also addressed the guests at the event. Saleem, a civil engineer by profession, aims at building bridges that bring people and community together. Saleem mentioned how he could use his expertise as a civil engineer towards revamping the roads, buildings and the overall infrastructure of the Village of Lincolnwood.

Lincolnwood Alliance candidates in the current elections are Jesal Patel for Mayor, Beryl Herman for Clerk, and three candidates Jean Ikezoe-Halevi, Grace Diaz Herrera, Mohammed Saleem for Trustees.Jesal, for over 14 years, has proven his honesty and integrity through his work and community service. Being a finance graduate, he envisions a thriving Lincolnwood through smart planning by creating new business opportunities as well as employment opportunities. He has many years of experience as a small business owner behind him. His firsthand knowledge and experience as an entrepreneur help him understand how important it is to support small businesses so they can expand, create new jobs, and thrive in our community.

Jesal, during his address at the meet and greet, mentioned how his career has helped him understand the challenges faced by homeowners as well as business owners especially during the pandemic. Jesal’s business, Patel Realty, has been serving the Village of Lincolnwood with its specialization in residential and retail real estate sales and investment for many years. Jesal has been a Trustee in Lincolnwood since 2007 and has served as Board liaison to multiple Village committees and boards.

The Lincolnwood Alliance team, under Jesal Patel’s proven leadership, promises to build an inclusive and welcoming village through transparent governance by involving the Lincolnwood residents in the decision-making process. One of the dreams of The Lincolnwood Alliance team is to create a welcoming and efficient atmosphere for all by providing first class customer service with its Service First Organization concept. Its emphasis on utilizing diversity on various committees and commissions aims to generate ideas and form visions for a prosperous village.

Jesal requested everyone to go for early voting which is at Oakton Community College 7701 N Lincoln Mon-Fri 9am – 5pm and on weekends 10am – 4pm through April 5th,2021. Election Day is April 6 and voters can find their polling place at https://www.cookcountyclerkil.gov/service/your-voter-information
The numbers on the ballot for the Lincolnwood Alliance Party are Jesal Patel for Mayor – #1, Beryl Herman for Clerk – #3, Jean Ikezoe-Halevi – #4, Grace Diaz Herrera – #5 and Mohammed Saleem – #6

Indra Nooyi Relates Her own story to evolving global economy

April 1, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

Indra Nooyi is one of the worlds foremost business visionaries, who broke the glass ceiling in global business as a woman of Indian origin and immigrant leading an iconic American company that operates in 200 countries. Now, she essays her journey in “My Life In Full: Work, Family And Our Future” to be published by Hachette India.

A revered corporate strategist, she is also a sought-after advisor to entrepreneurs, executives and governments.

As Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of PepsiCo from 2006 to 2018, she was the chief architect of Performance with Purpose, PepsiCo’s mission to deliver sustained growth by making more nutritious products, limiting the company’s environmental footprint, and empowering its associates and people in the communities it serves.

It offers an intimate look inside PepsiCo, detailing how Nooyi steered the iconic American company toward healthier products and reinvented its environmental profile without curbing financial performance — despite resistance at every turn. “My Life in Full” includes Nooyi’s unvarnished take on the competing pressures on her attention and time, and what she learned as a leader along the way.

“As I wrote ‘My Life in Full’, I saw how my own story relates to our evolving global economy and how it may inform our progress on better integrating work and family in the years ahead. I hope this book inspires business leaders, policymakers and all women and men passionate about easing the work-and-family burden to come together and create change”, Nooyi says of the memoir.

Thomas Abraham, Managing Director, Hachette India, says: “This is that unusual book that works at so many levels — as a celebration of an extraordinary life, as an emotional memoir, a

Dr. Vivek Murthy Confirmed By Senate As US Surgeon General, Will Focus On Covid, Opioids

March 26, 2021April 1, 2021 Ajay GhoshHealth, Nation USA, Profile 0

The US Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Vivek Murthy to be President Biden’s surgeon general, handing the administration one of its top public health officials amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, who as U.S. Surgeon General under President Obama had served as the United States Surgeon General and advocated a “healthier and more compassionate America,” was confirmed by the US Senate on Tuesday, March 23^rd for the second time as the Surgeon General of the United States. While Dr. Vivek Murthy says ending the coronavirus pandemic is his top priority, he’s also raised concerns over a relapsing opioid overdose crisis.

“I’m deeply grateful to be confirmed by the Senate to serve once again as your surgeon general,” Murthy said in a statement. “We’ve endured great hardship as a nation over the past year, and I look forward to working with you to help our nation heal and create a better future for our children.”

According to the Office of the Surgeon General, the so-called nation’s doctor is tasked with providing Americans with the best scientific information to “improve their health and reduce the risk of injury” while overseeing the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps’ more than 6,000 uniformed public health officers.

The vote on Murthy was 57-43, giving him bipartisan support. Biden’s coronavirus response can already count on plenty of star players, but Murthy has a particular niche. As a successful author he’s addressed issues of loneliness and isolation that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Roger Marshall (Kan.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska) joined Democrats in supporting his nomination on Tuesday.

But getting the support of every Democratic senator wasn’t always guaranteed. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) told reporters last month that he hadn’t made a decision, but ultimately ending up voting for him Tuesday.

“Murthy has confirmed his commitment to remaining non-partisan as Surgeon General and reaffirmed his belief that the vast majority of gun-owning Americans are responsible and follow the law. For these reasons, I believe Dr. Murthy is qualified to be Surgeon General and I look forward to working with him to address the numerous issues facing our nation,” Manchin said in a statement.

Covid-19 has taken the lives of several members of Murthy’s extended family. He told senators during his confirmation hearing that he wants to help individuals and families protect themselves by conveying “clear, science-based guidance” to the general public. Persuading Americans to keep up such protective measures as wearing masks could well be his toughest challenge. Murthy served as co-chair of the Biden transition team’s coronavirus advisory board, and is said to enjoy a close personal relationship with the president.

Murthy’s family roots are in India, but as a youngster he lived in Miami. His father had a medical clinic, where both parents worked. The son spent weekends helping out and says that’s where he discovered the art of healing. “As a child, I watched them make house calls in the middle of the night and wake up early to visit patients in the hospital before heading to their office,” he told senators. “I have tried to live by the lessons they embodied: that we have an obligation to help each other whenever we can, to alleviate suffering wherever we find it, and to give back to this country that made their lives, and my life, and the lives of my children possible.”

Murthy’s style evokes the bedside manner of an empathetic physician. He “effectively conveys compassion and credibility at a time of great need for just that,” said Chris Jennings, a longtime health policy adviser to Democrats.

From his previous stint as surgeon general, Murthy says he is most proud of his efforts to call attention to the opioid epidemic, the consequences of which were not fully understood at the time. After dipping slightly, opioid deaths have again risen, driven by street formulations laced with the powerful painkiller fentanyl. “We cannot neglect the other public health crises that have been exacerbated by this pandemic, particularly the opioid epidemic, mental illness and racial and geographic health inequities,” Murthy told senators.

Murthy has drawn opposition from gun rights advocates because of his longstanding assessment that mass shootings amount to a public health problem. But he told senators that while he supports the government studying gun violence as a problem, “my focus is not on this issue, and if I’m confirmed it will be on Covid, on mental health and substance use disorder.”

“He served our country with distinction, bringing much needed added attention to some of our nation’s most pressing public health challenges,” said Howard P. Forman, M.D., M.B.A., professor of diagnostic radiology, economics, and public health, and director of the M.D./M.B.A. Program. Forman served as a mentor to Murthy during his time at Yale. “We are all excited to see what the future holds for him, but I am confident that he will continue to be a very positive force for health and health care improvements.”

When President Obama nominated him as Surgeon General in 2013, Murthy immediately came under fire from the National Rifle Association and its allies in Congress for his view that gun violence should be seen as a public health issue. But more than 100 medical and public health organizations around the country supported his nomination.

During the 2008 campaign, Murthy founded Doctors for Obama, an effort to increase engagement by physicians in the political process. After Obama’s election, the group became Doctors for America, which advocated for comprehensive health care reform. In 2011, Obama appointed Murthy to serve on the Presidential Advisory Council on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“For the grandson of a poor farmer from India to be asked by the President to look out for the health of an entire nation was a humbling and uniquely American story. I will always be grateful to our country for welcoming my immigrant family nearly 40 years ago and giving me this opportunity to serve,” he wrote on Facebook on Friday. He also offered thanks for “the privilege of a lifetime. I have been truly humbled and honored to serve as your Surgeon General. I look forward to working alongside you in new ways in the years to come. Our journey for a stronger, healthier America continues.”

Murthy advised Biden for several months during the campaign on the coronavirus pandemic and vowed to focus on the mental health impact if he was confirmed. “We know a lot of what we need to do, we just aren’t doing it. We have for example, programs that we could be investing in schools to help provide mental health counseling to kids to detect symptoms of mental illness early. We can train more mental health providers,” Murthy said.

While nominating Murthy to the job he had held under Obama, Biden had said in December 2020, that the Indian American Doctor would have expanded responsibilities under his administration amid the coronavirus pandemic. “He will be a key public voice on the COVID response to restore public trust and faith in science and medicine,” Biden said, adding one of the reasons he nominated Murthy is because when he speaks people listen. “They trust you,” he said. “You have a way of communicating, they can just see it in your eyes.”

Dr. S.S. Lal, The First NRI Candidate in Kerala, Promising To Lead the State to Progress, Peace and Unity

March 17, 2021March 26, 2021 Staff ReporterNation India, Profile 0

Dr. S.S. Lal, a UDF candidate and a world renowned healthcare expert, is contesting the Assembly elections from Kazhakkoottam Constituency, Thiruvananthapuram, in the ensuing Kerala Assembly elections.

Dr. SS Lal, has been nominated as a UDF candidate to contest at the upcoming Assembly elections from Kazhakkoottam Constituency, Thiruvananthapuram, in the ensuing Kerala Assembly elections. As an internationally well known medical professional and public health specialist, who worked in international organizations such as WHO, as a social activist, educationist, and writer, Dr. Lal embodies the great values and leadership of the state of Kerala and India needs at this critical time in India’s history.

The electorate of this southern Indian constituency in the state of Kerala is around 2 lakhs. CPM has a very large following among the poor and the fisher folk. Kadakapall Surendran of CPM is the current MLA and Minister. BJP also has a large following. Surendran, BJP President contested from here last time and cornered around 40,000 votes. The educated and professionals in techno park, University, medical establishments may not go by political affiliations. One lakh votes could be an ideal target i.e. around 50 % of the electorate. House to house campaigning especially among the poor and institutional campaigning would be required. This constituency represents almost all major communities, including Christians, Moslems, and Hindus who are equally strong here.

Although Dr. S. S. Lal has been away from India on international assignments, he is not an “imported candidate” as he has been always connected with Thiruvananthapuram District. Since his childhood, he has left behind his own historical imprints wherever he stepped in. He completed his primary education at Government School, Pettah, Thiruvananthapuram, and at St. Joseph’s School. He holds an MBBS from the Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, and a Master’s (M.P.H.) degree in Public Health from the Sree Chitra National Institute. He has achieved Ph.D. from the world-renowned Leiden University in the Netherlands. He has been a regular winner of state-level literary competitions since his school days. He has published two novels and several short stories in later periodicals. The story continues.

Leadership is an individual’s ability to lead, inspire, and guide to transform other individuals, groups, organizations, or society for a good cause. These qualities are immensely embedded in an uncorrupted doctor-cum-politician, Dr. S.S. Lal. Undoubtedly, we have the proud moment that an American NRI gets a prominent political party seat in the Kerala assembly elections. For Dr.S.S.Lal moves wherever his ideologies are politically correct, as he is a dedicated politician hidden inside a health expert.

Dr. Lal has been active in leadership and social work, and was elected Chairman of the University College and Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram. He has also been a member of the Senate of the University of Kerala. He was the Secretary of the Kerala Medicos Association and the President of the Kerala House Surgeons Association. He was the Founding President of the Kerala Junior Doctors Association and the Founding Chairman of the Confederation of Medicos and Junior Doctors. Worked in leadership at the state and national levels of the I.M.A. Lal is the founder of the I.M.A.’s State Level Doctors Club and the I.M.A. Women’s Wing (WIMA). He is the Founding Secretary of the Kerala Doctors Trust and the Doctors Village.

His initiatives on several health projects like The ‘Act Force,’ which trained taxi-autorickshaw drivers to provide first aid to road accident victims, has helped thousands of people affected by road accidents. This pattern was later successfully repeated in various parts of the country. Many villages and old age homes were adopted with the help of doctors’ organizations. The village of Kallar, which rescued several other students on the day of several medical students’ death in a landslide, was thus adopted.

Dr: S.S. Lal is an internationally known public health expert. He has served as a senior official of the World Health Organization and some other international organizations in various countries, including India, and held position as Professor and Head of the Department of Public Health at the Global Institute of Public Health, Thiruvananthapuram; Vice-Chairman of a Global Committee of the World Health Organization and a member of several other committees.

His International work in Geneva and the United States has primarily led to suppressing tuberculosis, AIDS, and malaria in various countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America.

His first job at the World Health Organization was in 1999. He became an official in the system set up by the World Health Organization to provide technical assistance to the TB program in the country. He later served as New York’s Health Commissioner. Dr. Lal was selected to the first sixteen-member team of CDC Director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden. Dr.Lal was initially responsible for the team for Kerala, southern Tamil Nadu, and Lakshadweep.

Lal is a visiting Faculty Member at several international research institutes and universities, including the International Tuberculosis Research Institute in Tokyo; and Adjunct Professor at the Global Institute of Public Health, Thiruvananthapuram. He is a reviewer of scientific publications such as the World Health Organization’s Bulletin and the British Medical Journal.

Lal was the first doctor to present a series of health programs on Indian television. The weekly health program, ‘Pulse,’ which aired on the Asianet channel since its inception, quickly attracted a lot of attention. Launched in 1993, Lal aired over 500 episodes in a row till 2003. He was also a regular guest on All India Radio. He has been a columnist since the first issue of Mathrubhumi Health Magazine in 1997. He was a long-time columnist for the Delhi edition of Manorama newspaper from 2004.. For a long time, he was the editor and columnist of the health magazine ‘Our Health’. ‘He manages the ‘Rounds’ column in the Kerala Kaumudi newspaper. He continues to write in medical journals and other periodicals. He has published over four hundred scientific articles.

Dr. Lal is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards: like the National Award in 1995 for his outstanding performance in implementing health schemes in the country. In 2005, IMA’s most prestigious ‘Ranbaxy – IMA Award, and the IMA’s own ‘Dr. Menda Memorial Award’, Best Television Health Program Presenter, Rotary Award in 1998 for her work in the field of polio eradication. He has visited more than eighty countries as part of his international career in the field of health.

Until last year, he was the Director of the Infectious Diseases Unit in charge of the Tuberculosis Division at Family Health International, an American international health organization based in the U.S. capital, Washington, DC. From 2013 to 2018, he was the Global Director of the Tuberculosis Unit of the international organization Path in the United States. Dr. Lal has published several short stories and two novels. Lal is a blogger and photographer who is constantly interacting on Facebook through writing.

At present Dr. Lal is the President of All India Professional Congress at Kerala, and vibrant in the media and with his personal participation in channel discussions and active in social issues.

His eminent leadership as the President of Indo American Press Club is continuously uplifting the organization in its various activities in USA and Canada.

Abundantly enriched with his characteristics of honesty, integrity and confidence, Dr.Lal is an ideal candidate who deserves to win so that he can fight for the common man, cleanse current politics, work towards providing a clean and corruption-free administration, and spearhead exponential socio-economic and technological development of Kerala and India, sure enough to make us proud with an exceptional international impact.

Dr. Lal may be a UDF candidate. However, irrespective of political affiliations, he is an ideal candidate who deserves to win in order to represent the interests of the common man, who can cleanse the current politics, work towards providing a clean and corruption-free administration, and spearhead exponential socio-economic and technological development of Kerala and India, making an international impact. In this post-COVID scenario his candidature becomes all the more relevant. As an expatriate Keralite and Indian, he is aware of the problems of the NRIs and NRKs and he will fight for their just causes. But above all he will use their expertise and resources for Kerala’s and India’s development.

Bhaskar Menon, Founding Chairman of EMI Music Worldwide, Dies at 86

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterEntertainment, Profile 0

Bhaskar Menon, the Indian American founding chairman and CEO of EMI Music Worldwide and a legend in the music business, died March 4 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 86. “Determined to achieve excellence, Bhaskar Menon built EMI into a music powerhouse and one of our most iconic, global institutions,” said Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge in a statement. “Music and the world have lost a special one. Our hearts go out to his loved ones.”

In a career spanning over three decades, Menon was associated with some of the biggest names in the music industry, from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd, Queen, David Bowie and Tina Turner.

Before EMI, Menon was the CEO of Capitol Records and is credited with launching Pink Floyd’s popularity in the U.S. with the campaign that he designed for the band’s release of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” reported NDTV.

Menon was born in 1934 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He attended the Doon School, Dehradun, and Christ Church, Oxford, after which he joined EMI in 1956. In 1957, he moved to EMI’s Indian subsidiary, Gramophone Company of India, where he rose through the ranks before eventually being elevated to chairman in 1969, according to billboard.com.

Billboard noted that the most notable chapter in Menon’s career began in 1971, when he relocated to Los Angeles, Calif., in 1971 to take the helm at Capitol and steered the company into the new decade.

Menon’s tenure at Capitol came to an end in 1978, when he was named chairman and CEO of EMI Music Worldwide, a position he held for the next 12 years, per Billboard.

After leaving the music business in the early 1990s, Menon remained in Los Angeles and founded the company International Media Investments in 1995, through which he invested in and provided consultation services for a variety of entertainment and media businesses, including NDTV, where he held a seat on the board, it said.

Menon is survived by his wife Sumitra, their two sons, Siddhartha and Vishnu, and his sister Vasantha Menon.

Indra Nooyi Honored By National Women’s Hall Of Fame

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

Indra Nooyi, former chairperson and chief executive officer of PepsiCo is among nine women inducted into the 2021 class of National Women’s Hall of Fame (NWHF). Nooyi who has consistently ranked among the world’s most powerful people was honored for her contribution to the business field. The NWHF made the announcement on March 8, International Women’s Day.

The nation’s oldest membership organization, NWHF is dedicated to honoring and celebrating the achievements of these distinguished American women, the organization’s website says, noting that it uses the stories of its inductees as tools for inspiration, innovation and imagination,

During her tenure at PepsiCo, the company grew its net revenue by more than eighty percent, and PepsiCo’s total shareholder return was one hundred and sixty-two percent, the NWHF says in its press release.

PepsiCo expanded significantly during Nooyi’s tenure, acquiring Tropicana Products, Inc., merging with Quaker Oats Company and PepsiCo’s anchor bottlers, and acquiring the Russian company Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods, resulting in the largest international acquisition in PepsiCo’s history.

In addition to her business success as CEO, Nooyi was the chief architect of Performance with Purpose, PepsiCo’s pledge to do what is right for the business by being responsive to the needs of the world.

This pledge included delivering more nutritious products, limiting the company’s environmental footprint, and empowering its associates and the people in the communities PepsiCo serves.

Other women honored include the late renowned author Octavia Butler, former United States Army officer Rebecca Halstead, a multidisciplinary artist Joy Harjo, late philanthropist and educator Emily Howland, late NASA research mathematician Katherine Johnson, former first lady of the United States Michelle Obama, soccer icon Mia Hamm, and feminist artist and educator Judy Chicago. aHaHBnnn

NWHF will celebrate the inclusion of these women into the Hall at the biennial in-person induction ceremony on Oct. 2, 2021 at the its new home, the recently revitalized 1844 Seneca Knitting Mill building in New York. The ceremony will be held monitoring the COVID-19 situation and will be live streamed free to the public.

Outstanding Women’s Achievements Awards Gala Held Virtually

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Indi JaiswalCommunity, Profile, Women 0

On a Cool Saturday Evening, March 6, 2021, Honorable Supervisor Joseph Saladino, New York State Assembly woman Jennifer Raj Kumar, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, Bobby Kumar Kalotee, Founding Member of IAF, and Community Leaders, joined in the ZOOM Call, they all very well felt the pride and achievement regarding the theme of the program. The attendance of Honorees and members of Indian American Community filled up the screens. of so many accomplished and elite, who is who of the society gathered for one singular purpose, to be the part of and to celebrate 10th Outstanding Women’s Achievements Gala, part of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day Celebrations

IAF (Indian American Forum) led by Indu Jaiswal, known for her strong commitment and dedication to the community cause was the organizing force behind the gala. This year well known Community Leader Shammi Singh was the Chairperson of the Gala., Shammi Singh in her remarks welcomed all the guests congratulated all the honorees and praised their efforts in achieving such success. American National Anthem sung by Gurbani Kaur Sethi and Indian National Anthem sung by Roopam Maini. Mistress of Ceremonies Aashmeeta Yogiraj Sandhu. Made the evening enjoyable.

Program started with Ganesh Vandana sung by Vandana Jauhar, Dance performances presented by students of Nartan Rang Dance Academy, well-known Choreographers Swati Vaishnav, Students from Satya Narayan Charka Schools. Vocal performances by Pallavi, Jyoti Gupta and Kul Bhushan Sharma enthralled the audience.

Chanbir Kaur Sethi, Roopam Maini, Inesha Singh, Rohini Singh and Dr Meena Jaiswal coordinated a brief Q&A session with the honorees discussing and emphasizing their accomplishments.

Town of Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino congratulated all honorees and acknowledged the efforts of IAF Team. Five distinguished women who had excelled in their profession and community services were presented with Outstanding Women’s achievements Awards

Dr NIRMAL KUMAR KHURANA, MD.MBA. F.A.A. P A very well well-known pediatrician of Long Island, who not only treated children over half a century to maintain their robust health but also trained an army of doctors on Long Island Hospitals.: Mercy, South Nassau, Hempstead General Etc. A very successful entrepreneur too who along with her husband Dr ISH KUMAR, a neurosurgeon, attained successes in many enterprises in America and founded a large Hospital in India facility with first class medical technologies which is also affiliated with a medical college in New Delhi. India, to meet the health care challenges of burgeoning population and train an army of medical doctors, to meet future needs. Both are known for their philanthropic work over several decades that served various causes of humanity.

DR ANGELISH KUMAR MD, NCMP, AOA A young dynamic diplomat of the American Board of Urology, who is affiliated with Mount Sinai Hospital. Shei s also the founder of Women’s Orology, New York, New York. She got training at NEW YORK UNIVERSITY’S LANGON MEDICAL CENTER. Dr Kumar has handled women’s need with cutting edge technology very successfully for over a decade enhancing the quality of care for busy New York City women who want to stay fit and make most of their lives. Dr. Kumar serves on the Executive Boards of Springboard Enterprises, USA and Human Care Charitable Trust a medical facility in New Delhi, India

HONORABLE LAURA CURRAN A very successful NASSAU COUNTY EXECUTIVE serving the sixth richest county of America, abutting New York City, with Gold Coast of America, she opened the gates of opportunity to many on Long Island and handled the Pandemic specter very ably to control it and is bringing the thriving economy back to Long Island.

HONORABLE JENNIFER RAJKUMAR A dynamic political leader and first Indian American Lady to get elected as ASSEMBLY WOMAN OF THE NEW YOTK STATE ASSEMBLY in the thirty-eight district to lead the well-known State of New York with a thriving population of over twenty million. We wish her good luck

MS ROOPAL PATEL A glamorous leader in the fashion world of New York City where she leads as SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT in the prestigious SAKS FIFTH AVENUE, bringing a touch of beauty and elegance to the lives of eight million New York City dwellers and beyond.

Also, Citations of Appreciations were presented to Dr Sanjana Jon and MS Brahashitha Gupta for their community services. Nassau County Executive Honorable Laura Curran was all in praises for the efforts of Indian American Forum and Indian American Community. She congratulated all honorees and stressed the importance of role women are playing in this world. Citations of behalf of Nassau County Executive Laura Curran were presented by Jasbir Jay Singh Executive Member of Office of ASIAN AMERICAN AFFAIRS, NASSAU COUNTY and from Town of Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino, New York State Senator Kevin Thomas Were presented to all Honorees

Among those present during the event were Bobby Kumar Kalotee Founder of IAF and Chair of Nassau County Human right Commissioner Board of Trustees Dr Parveen Chopra, Dr Azad Anand, Surinder Rametra, Dr Ved Kawatra, Animesh Goenka, Dr Urmilesh Arya, Dr Bhupendra Patel, Board members Beena Kothari, Bina Sabapathy, Nirmala Rametra, Anu Gulati, Dr Meena Jaiswal, Vijay Goswamy, Dr Meena Jaiswal, Roopam Maini, Chanbir Kaur Sethi, Rohini Singh, Anuj Rihal, Inesha Singh, Gala Chairperson Shammi Singh and Many others helped in making the event a grand success.

Also, messages and video clips were presented by Anika Tolat from Arti Foundation, Dr Pratichi Goenka from AIA and Dr Sudha Acharya from SACCS ., in appreciation for their support with IAF during COVID Pandemic, providing relief helping with donations of PPE, Food for seniors, Donations to SACCS Food Pantry, Donations of Jackets, blankets and many more items as needed to the Veterans.

It was indeed a very successful evening, showcasing and honoring outstanding women achievers, who are successful in business, cultural, professional, education, and medical. Community and social services.

Naureen Hassan Named 1st VP, COO Of NY Fed

March 10, 2021March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterFinance/Economy, Profile 0

Indian-American Naureen Hassan, a 25-year veteran of the financial services industry, has been named as the First Vice President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the Bank said that the appointment effective March 15, was approved by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. “As First Vice President, Hassan will be the New York Fed’s second ranking officer as well as an alternate voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee,” the statement said.

“Naureen’s leadership background, deep commitment to fostering diverse teams, and extensive technology and financial experience will be critical to her role as a bank leader,” John C. Williams, President and CEO of the New York Fed, was quoted as saying in the statement.

“I am confident that Naureen will be an inspiring and innovative leader, and look forward to working with her to move our organisation forward in line with our values,” he added.

Meanwhile, Denise Scott, Executive Vice President of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and chair of the New York Fed’s Board of Directors, said that “Naureen’s leadership experience and operational expertise are fully aligned with what the search committee and I envisioned for this role”.

According to the statement, Hassan has previously served in various capacities in the financial services industry, focusing primarily on digital and business process transformation. For the past four years, she was Chief Digital Officer of wealth management at Morgan Stanley. Hassan’s parents are immigrants from Kerala, India. Her father, Javad K. Hassan was a former senior executive at IBM and former president of Global Inter Connect Systems at AMP Inc (now TE Connectivity). (IANS)

Vanita Gupta’s Nomination As US Associate Attorney-General Meets With Mixed Response From Conservatives

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterNation USA, Profile, Women 0

After the Indian-American cabinet nominee, Neera Tandon withdrew her nomination last week, , the focus is now on Vanita Gupta, who is soon to face the Senate for confirmation as the third highest-ranking official in the Justice Department. Conservatives are split on Gupta, a civil rights lawyer, with two groups fighting it out with TV ads — one rallying against attacks on her by another.

President Joe Biden has nominated Gupta to be the associate attorney-general and the Senate is take up her confirmation – a requirement for senior administration positions – on March 9.

The first salvo came from the Judicial Crisis Network with an ad campaign accusing her of being soft on crime. In a reference to the Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality that sometimes turned violent last year, the group’s ad said, “When our cities burned Gupta could’ve stood for law and order, for victims. Instead, she advocated to let convicts out of jail.”

However, it also coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic and her suggestion to release some of the low-level criminals only echoed that of former President Donald Trump’s Attorney General William Barr, who wanted to ease crowding inn jails to ease overcrowding that could spread the disease. According to media reports, the Network spent $800,000 on the campaign.

Now, the Defending Democracy Together (DDT) organization is countering it with a campaign ad of its own that is on YouTube and is set to air on TV. Urging her nomination, the ad said, “Don’t let Washington play politics with the nomination of Vanita Gupta.”

It said that she “has been building bridges across partisan divides, she has the broad backing of law enforcement” and has the support of leading conservatives.

DDT is a group of Republican conservatives who have opposed Trump. Its directors include former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and Linda Chavez, the highest-ranking woman among former President Ronald Reagan’s White House staff.

Gupta will need the support of all the 50 Democrats in the evenly-divided Senate to get her nomination approved – or will have to get Republican support if anyone from her party defects.

Tanden’s nomination to be the director of the Office of Management and Budget is stalled because one Democrat, Joseph Manchin, announced that he will not vote for her citing her intemperate statements and tweets attacking both Republicans and Democrats.

While a leftist group, Roots Action, has campaigned against Tanden, who had attacked the leftist Senator Bernie Sanders among others, the Democrats and other liberals are solidly behind Gupta.

The Wall Street Journal reported that a petition against Gupta was being circulated by some Republican state attorneys-general.

Countering that campaign and the one by the Network campaign labelling Gupta soft on crime, three groups of law enforcement officials – Fraternal Order of Police, Major County Sheriffs of America and Federal Law Enforcement Officials Association have come out to support her.

During his Senate hearings Merrick Garland, who was confirmed as the attorney-general, faced hostile questions about Gupta from Republican Senator Mike Lee.

Garland vouched for her saying, “I regard her as a person of great integrity and a person dedicated to the mission of the department, particularly equal justice under the law.”

Gupta was the principal deputy assistant attorney-general and head of the Civil Rights Division in former President Barack Obama’s administration.

She made her mark as a newly-minted lawyer by winning the release of 38 people, most of them African-Americans, who had been wrongly convicted by all-White juries on drug charges in a Texas town and also got them $6 million on compensation. (IANS)

In Pope Francis, Biden Has A Potential Ally — Who Shares The Same Catholic Detractors

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCulture, Profile, Religion 0

The second Roman Catholic president in American history is a devout man who makes no secret of the importance of faith in his life. President Joe Biden is a regular churchgoer, often quotes St. Augustine and carries a rosary that belonged to his late son Beau. In one of the first images released of him in the Oval Office, a photo was visible behind his desk showing him with Pope Francis.

The Argentine-born pope and the new American president have both staked out liberal stances on issues like climate change and economic disparity, and have taken different positions from their “culture warrior” predecessors.

Biden diametrically differs from former President Donald Trump in his support for a more inclusive society, on issues ranging from immigration and health care to LGBTQ equality. Francis has moved away from Pope John Paul II’s and Benedict XVI’s emphasis on sexual morality, preferring to focus on social justice and the rights of the poor and marginalized. He has repeatedly lashed out at what he describes as the destructive effects of laissez-faire capitalism on society and the environment.

The pope and the president have a lot in common, says Paul Elie, a scholar of Catholicism at Georgetown University.

“Their informality, the fact that they were elected late in life, the fact that they seem to take issues as they come, listening, discerning and then acting,” he says. “And both of them, I think, have surprised their people by turning out to be more progressive than was expected.”

In the November election, just over half of American Catholics voted against Biden, in great part because of his support for laws such as those guaranteeing abortion rights that run contrary to Church doctrine.

Nevertheless, the new president has a friend — and potential ally — at the Vatican. On Inauguration Day, Pope Francis sent Biden a warm note saying, “Grave crises facing our human family call for farsighted and united responses.”

Relations between Pope Francis and Trump were at best chilly. When Trump was still a candidate in 2016, Pope Francis suggested he was “not a Christian” for his campaign vow to deport more immigrants and build a wall along the border with Mexico. A year later, the pope wondered how Trump could claim to be “pro-life” while ordering policies that broke up the families of immigrants and asylum seekers.

Biden’s election was welcomed by the Vatican — but without mention of his support for abortion rights, says Villanova University theology professor Massimo Faggioli.

“It’s clear that they see this moment as a return to some sanity. This is what the Vatican really holds dear,” says Faggioli, “so that that there is a predictability in the relations between countries and leaders.”

Faggioli, the author of Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, argues that under the influence of the previous two papacies, the U.S. Catholic Church leadership became increasingly traditionalist, ignoring any discourse on racism, rule of law or voting rights — and has thus become more closely allied with the political right.

He points out that Biden and the pope share the same detractors among American Catholic leaders — the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which he says “is dominated by ultraconservative Catholic bishops whose political sympathies lie very clearly with the Republican Party, and not just on the abortion issue.”

The Vatican was reportedly annoyed by a bishops’ conference statement on Inauguration Day. Signed by the group’s leader, Archbishop José H. Gomez, the statement lamented that “our new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender.” It added that “for the nation’s bishops, the continued injustice of abortion remains the preeminent priority.”

An unnamed senior Vatican official told the Catholic publication America, “It is most unfortunate and is likely to create even greater divisions within the Church in the United States.”

“So, there is an extremist wing of the Catholic Church,” says Faggioli, “which is a handful of bishops, but a bigger chunk of the clergy.”

For example, last August, the Rev. James Altman of La Crosse, Wisc., posted a video to YouTube in which he proclaimed, “You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat, period. Their party platform absolutely is against everything the Catholic Church teaches. Repent of your support of that party and its platform or face the fires of hell.” It has been viewed more than a million times.

Not all conservative Catholics strike such an apocalyptic tone toward Democrats. But many share a message of condemnation.

In a podcast last month with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, George Weigel, an author and political analyst who has written extensively about the Catholic Church, said the new president seems quite sincere in his personal piety. But he went on to attack Biden, saying he “facilitates grave moral evils. Mr. Biden is an incoherent Catholic and incoherent Catholics should not be presenting themselves for Holy Communion as if they were living in full communion with the church.”

As both Francis and Biden ignore their Catholic critics, presidential historian Timothy Naftali sees potential parallels now with a period at the peak of the Cold War six decades ago.

Six months after the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the precipice of nuclear annihilation in 1962, Pope John XXIII issued the Pacem in Terris encyclical. Addressed not just to Catholics but to all people “of good will,” it called for peacemaking through negotiation.

A week later, President John F. Kennedy cited the document in a major speech, and was subsequently able to win domestic support for a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union.

Naftali believes the pope and Biden could join forces against climate change — the great threat facing humanity today.

“Given the prominence of Pope Francis on this issue, the fact that he has identified climate change as an existential threat,” says Naftali, “there is a natural partnership with a secular leader who has also identified climate change as an existential threat. These are two leaders powerful in different realms. That’s an opportunity. And it’s not an opportunity that comes every generation.”

Naftali is convinced that amid so much disinformation on the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines, these two prominent Catholics could also work together to convince more people that science and faith are not mutually exclusive.

A Virtual International Women’s Day Honoring Inspiring Women Planned

March 3, 2021March 10, 2021 Divya ChaturvediCommunity, Profile, Women 0

International Women’s Day, observed on March 8th every year, celebrates the many achievements of women globally and raises awareness about gender equality. The day is marked by a multitude of events and rallies that are held across the globe.

United India Association of New England, together with Saheli, Women Who Win #Dreamcatchers, and Asian American Commission, is holding a virtual International Women’s Day event on March 6^th from 3.00 to 5.00 pm in partnership with Team Aid, TAGB, Sewa International, Project Just Because, INE Multimedia, and Newton-Wellesley Hospital.

Massachusetts Senate President Karen E. Spilka will headline the event as a keynote speaker. As the 95^th President of the Massachusetts Senate, Senator Spilka has broad-ranging legislative accomplishments. They cover critical areas like criminal justice reform, economic development, education, and services for the elderly and differently-abled communities.

The theme of the International Women’s Day event is ‘Celebrating Women’s Leadership’. The event will highlight inspiring women leaders from South Asia, raise awareness about challenges facing women and prevailing gender biases, and present suggestions and recommendations for brand elevation and emotional well-being. The event will feature presentations and discussions on topics like unconscious bias, building your personal brand, emotional first-aid, women in leadership, and the role of men as allies.

The topics will be curated by accomplished women leaders in the South Asian community who will bring their leadership perspectives to the discussion.

Aditi Soni, Director, Program and Alliance Management at Dyne Therapeutics and President of the United India Association of New England (UIANE)
Meenakshi Bharath, Commissioner, Asian American Commission and Chair, DESE Gifted & Talented Education Advisory Council
Malini Prabhu, Psychiatrist at Newton Wellesley Hospital, Assistant Professor at Tufts University, and Vice President of UAE.
Roopal Patel, Vice President at Parexel International and Leadership & Executive Coach
Shaleen Sheth, Co-Founder, Women Who Win #Dreamcatchers
Manju Sheth, Co-founder of Women who Win #Dreamcatchers
Deepa Zhaveri, Podiatrist at Beth Israel Lahey Hospital & Boston Medical Center, Treasurer, Indian Medical Association of New England, and Co-founder Women Who Win #Dreamcatchers
Rollie Lal, Associate Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University
Divya Chaturvedi, Co-Executive Director, Saheli Inc.
Shweta Agrawal, Director of Marketing and Mobile development at a smart city startup based in Burlington and Saheli Board Member
Tanu Debasri, Saheli Board Member and HR Professional
Samantha Ganglani, Vice President of Global Development at D-L Incentives,
Anupama Gotimukula, Pediatric Anesthesiologist, Children’s Hospital of San Antonio
Pratima Penumarthy, Founder and Director of Arya Math Academy
Shova Sharma, Financial Service Professional at New York Life and Board Member of Sewa International

The International Women’s Day event hopes to inspire women to embrace the leader within them and become agents of change in making the world a better, more equitable place.

To register for the virtual event and view the full agenda and speaker lineup, click here. To join the International Women’s Day conversation on social media, use the hashtags #uianeboston, #ChooseToChallenge, #IWD2021 on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Bollywood’s Sense Of Women’s Beauty Is To Fair Skin

March 3, 2021March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Profile, Women 0

We often hear comments such as these from women, especially in the fancy Bollywood world: “The managers like me more because I am fair and I look like a foreigner.” “You should apply haldi [turmeric] to your skin. If you don’t become fair, who will marry you?” “I was dark when I was born, but my parents bathed me in brandy to make me fair. Your parents should have tried it too.”

Fair-skinned women have often thought of themselves as superior. They have displayed a sense of entitlement because of their fairness. For Bollywood, beautiful women have fair skin, according to an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based computer analysis which reveals that conception of beauty has remained consistent through the years in the film industry centered in Mumbai. The automated computer analysis was led by Indian-origin researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the US.

The research revealed that babies whose births were depicted in Bollywood films from the 1950s and 60s were more often than not boys; in today’s films, boy and girl newborns are about evenly split. In the 50s and 60s, dowries were socially acceptable; today, not so much.

The researchers, led by Kunal Khadilkar and Ashiqur KhudaBukhsh of CMU’s Language Technologies Institute (LTI), gathered 100 Bollywood movies from each of the past seven decades along with 100 of the top-grossing Hollywood moves from the same periods.

They then used statistical language models to analyse subtitles of those 1,400 films for gender and social biases, looking for such factors as what words are closely associated with each other. “Most cultural studies of movies might consider five or 10 movies,” said Khadilkar, a master’s student in LTI.

“Our method can look at 2,000 movies in a matter of days.”

For instance, the researchers assessed beauty conventions in movies by using a so-called cloze test.

Essentially, it’s a fill-in-the-blank exercise: “A beautiful woman should have BLANK skin.”

A language model normally would predict “soft” as the answer, the researchers noted.

But when the model was trained with the Bollywood subtitles, the consistent prediction became “fair”.

The same thing happened when Hollywood subtitles were used, though the bias was less pronounced, said the study.

To assess the prevalence of male characters, the researchers used a metric called Male Pronoun Ratio (MPR), which compares the occurrence of male pronouns such as “he” and “him” with the total occurrences of male and female pronouns.

From 1950 through today, the MPR for Bollywood and Hollywood movies ranged from roughly 60 to 65 MPR.

Looking at words associated with dowry over the years, the researchers found such words as “loan,” “debt” and “jewelry” in Bollywood films of the 50s, which suggested compliance.

By the 1970s, other words, such as “consent” and “responsibility,” began to appear. Finally, in the 2000s, the words most closely associated with dowry — including “trouble,” “divorce” and “refused” — indicate noncompliance or its consequences.

“All of these things we kind of knew,” said KhudaBukhsh, an LTI project scientist, “but now we have numbers to quantify them. And we can also see the progress over the last 70 years as these biases have been reduced.” The findings were presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence virtual conference earlier this month. (IANS)

In Vice President Kamala Harris, We Can See How America Has Changed

March 3, 2021March 10, 2021 Kim Parker and Amanda BarrosoCommunity, Profile, Women 0

The swearing-in of Kamala Harris as the vice president of the United States marked several important “firsts”: She became the first female vice president, as well as the first Black person and first Asian American to hold that office. But her ascendance to the second-highest office in the land represented so much more. It held up a mirror to America, revealing how key demographic trends have reshaped the country.

Kamala Harris embodies several trends that have been unfolding gradually over recent decades. As a result, many Americans – not just women of color – can see themselves in her story.

The rise in multiracial Americans: Harris has a multiracial background. Her mother was South Asian and her father is Black. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Americans who identify as two or more races are one of the fastest growing racial or ethnic groups in the country, along with Asians. Roughly 6.3 million American adults – 2.5% of the adult population – identified as being more than one race in 2019. The number has grown significantly since the census first allowed people to choose more than one racial category to describe themselves in 2000. Among adults who identify as more than one race, relatively few (2.1%) are Black and Asian.

Racial identity is complex, and estimates of the multiracial population may underrepresent the share of people who identify with multiple racial groups based on their family history. In addition, racial identity can be fluid and may change over the course of one’s lifetime. In a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, about three-in-ten adults with a multiracial background said the way they describe their race has changed over the years – either from seeing themselves as multiracial at one point and single race at another, or vice versa.

Growing waves of immigrants are from Asia and the Caribbean: Harris is the daughter of two immigrants, one from India and one from Jamaica. The share of immigrants from Asia living in the U.S. has been on the rise in recent decades, following the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. In 2018, Asians made up 28% of the U.S. foreign-born population, up from 4% in 1960. And starting as early as 2010, Asian immigrants outnumbered Hispanic immigrants among new arrivals.

Harris’ father immigrated to the U.S. in 1961 from Jamaica. There were roughly 125,000 Black immigrants in the U.S. at that time, but their numbers have grown steadily, particularly in the last two decades. By 2019, one-in-ten Black people living in the U.S. were foreign born. That same year, Jamaica was the top birthplace for Black immigrants.

As a second-generation American, Harris is among the roughly 25 million U.S. adults who are children of immigrants. This group represents about 10% of the adult population.

The rise of intermarriage: Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is White, which makes them – as a couple – part of a growing group of intermarried couples. In 2019, 11% of all married U.S. adults had a spouse who was a different race or ethnicity from them, up from 3% in 1967. Among newlyweds in 2019, roughly one-in-five (19%) were intermarried.

The rise of intermarriage was driven initially by legal changes: The 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia ruled that marriage across racial lines was legal throughout the country. Demographic trends have contributed as well – in particular, the growing share of the population that is Asian or Hispanic, as these groups are more likely than others to marry someone of another race or ethnicity. As of 2015, the largest share of intermarried couples include one Hispanic and one White spouse. Some 15% are White and Asian, 12% are White and multiracial and 11% are White and Black.

In addition, public attitudes about intermarriage have evolved. The public has become more accepting of mixed marriages. In 2017, 39% of all adults said the growing number of people marrying someone of a different race is a good thing for the country, up from 24% in 2010.

Divorce and blended families: When she married Emhoff – who is divorced and has two children from his previous marriage – Harris became part of a blended family. The American family has evolved considerably in recent decades, and today there is no typical “family.” In 1980, most children younger than 18 lived in a household with two married parents who were in their first marriage. By 2014, fewer than half of U.S. children lived in that type of household. Some 15% lived with parents in a remarriage, 7% lived with cohabiting parents and 26% lived with an unpartnered parent.

Trends in divorce and remarriage have contributed to the increasing diversity of family types. The divorce rate for U.S. adults ages 50 and older has roughly doubled since the 1990s. At the same time, divorce has become less common for younger adults who are delaying marriage until later in life. In 2015, for every 1,000 married adults ages 50 and older, 10 had divorced.

Remarriage is also on the rise. In 2013, four-in-ten new marriages in the U.S. included at least one partner who had been married before. This marked a significant increase from past decades, fueled in large part by rising divorce rates and the overall aging of the U.S. population, which gives people more years to form – and dissolve – marital unions.

Childlessness: Harris does not have any biological children of her own. A look at U.S. women at the end of their childbearing years reveals that 15% were childless in 2014, while the majority (85%) had given birth to at least one child. The childlessness rate was down from 20% in 2005 but still higher than the rate prior to the 1990s.

Higher levels of education are associated with higher rates of childlessness. In 2014, only 7% of women ages 40 to 44 without a high school diploma were childless. This compares with 13% of those who completed high school or attended some college, and about 20% of those with a bachelor’s degree or more education.

Delayed marriage: Harris married when she was 49 years old, and while this is older than the median age at first marriage, it reflects a trend toward women and men waiting longer to get married. In 2020, the U.S. had its highest median age at first marriage on record – 28.1 for women and 30.5 for men. These numbers have crept up steadily over time. In 2000, the median age at first marriage was 25.1 for women and 26.8 for men. In 1980, the median ages were 22.0 for women and 24.7 for men.

One reason for the uptick in delayed marriage is a rise in cohabitation among Americans. A 2019 Pew Research Center analysis found that the share of adults ages 18 to 44 who have ever cohabited (59%) was higher than the share who had ever been married (50%). This represented a reversal of sorts from 2002, when more adults had been married (60%) than had ever cohabited (54%).

At the same time, relatively few adults view marriage as central to a person’s happiness. In 2019, only 17% of adults said being married was essential for a woman to live a fulfilling life, and a similar share (16%) said the same about a man. Having a job or career they enjoy is viewed as essential for women and men to live fulfilling lives by much larger shares of the public (46% and 57% respectively). Still, a majority of never-married adults said in a 2017 survey that they wanted to get married someday.

Interfaith marriage: Harris and Emhoff are among a growing share of married adults whose spouse does not share their religion. Harris is Christian and attends a Baptist church, and Emhoff is Jewish. While most married adults in the U.S. have a spouse who is the same religion as them, that has become less common in recent decades. Among adults who were married before 1960 (and are still married), only 19% have a spouse who does not share their religion. For those married in the 1980s and ’90s, 30% are in an interfaith marriage. The share has continued to rise: 39% of adults who were married between 2010 and 2014 have a spouse who identifies with a different religious group than their own.

The most common interfaith marriages involve Christians who are either married to a spouse from a different Christian tradition or Christians who are married to an unaffiliated spouse. The share who are married to someone from a different faith (such as Harris and Emhoff) is smaller but still growing.

Women in leadership: Before becoming the first female vice president, Harris served as a U.S. senator. Elected in 2016, Harris joined 20 other women in the U.S. Senate in 2017. This marked a historic high for women; the number rose to 25 in 2019. Now, the Senate has 24 female members, including one Latina woman and two who are Asian-Pacific Islander. There are no Black women currently serving in the Senate. In the House of Representatives, women make up 27.3% of current members. This represents a historic high for that chamber.

While women have made significant gains in leadership positions in recent decades, they still hold a relatively small share of top leadership positions in politics and in business. Women hold only nine of the nation’s governorships. They were 7.4% of Fortune 500 CEOs in 2020 and 27% of Fortune 500 board members in 2019.

For their part, most Americans say they would like to see more women in top leadership positions, and majorities see women and men as equally capable across key dimensions of leadership. Still, most men and women say it’s generally easier for men to get elected to high political office and to get top executive positions in business

Educational gains for women: Kamala Harris is a highly educated woman. She has a bachelor’s degree and a law degree. Her achievements in this area are emblematic of a generation of women who have surpassed men in terms of educational attainment. In 2019, among those ages 25 and older, 37% of women and 35% of men had completed four years of college.

Looking at young adults, the gender gap in favor of women is much wider, reflecting recent gains. In 2020, 44% of women ages 25 to 29 had at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 35% of men in the same age group. Young women surpassed young men in college completion for the first time in 1991. Since then the gender gap has steadily grown. Today, young women are more likely than young men to have completed a four-year college degree across all major racial and ethnic groups.

Women also make up the majority of enrolled law school students. In 2020, 55% of those enrolled in U.S. law schools were women, while 45% were men. Women are represented in larger shares among White law students as well as students from racial and ethnic minority groups.

Attorney Kiran Ahuja Appointed By Biden To Head Office Of Personnel Management

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

President Joe Biden has appointed Kiran Ahuja, a civil rights lawyer and an advocate for Asian Americans, to head the Office of Personnel Management. Ahuja, whose nomination was announced Feb. 23 by the White House, is joining at least 20 other Indian Americans nominated by Biden to senior positions in his administration.

As a member of Biden’s transition team, she was in charge of ensuring a smooth move by the agency to the new administration. OPM oversees the federal government’s civil service, coordinating the recruitment of government employees, and manages their health insurance and retirement benefits programs.

In former President Barack Obama’s administration Ahuja had served in the OPM as chief of staff. She will have to be confirmed by the Senate in her new position. Ahuja is now the CEO of Philanthropy Northwest, a network of charitable organizations across six states.

The White House said Ahuja grew up in Savannah, Georgia, “as a young Indian immigrant in the wake of the civil rights era.” She shares an educational background with Vice President Kamala Harris having attended a historically Black institution like her. Harris went to Howard University for her bachelor’s degree and Ahuja to Spelman College in Atlanta.

With a law degree from the University of Georgia, Ahuja “began her career as a civil rights lawyer at the U.S .Department of Justice, litigating school desegregation cases, and filing the department’s first student racial harassment case,” according to the White House.

Initially in the Obama administration she had been the executive director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, “leading efforts to increase access to federal services, resources and programs for underserved Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders,” according to the White House.

She also founded the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, an advocacy and membership organization. As yet, none of the Indian American nominees requiring Senate confirmation have come up for a vote before it.

Ahuja grew up in Savannah, Georgia as a young Indian immigrant in the wake of the civil rights era and earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Spelman College and a law degree from the University of Georgia.

The Washington Post said Ahuja would have a mandate to reverse course on former president Donald Trump’s policies on the civil service, which he and his top aides often derided as a deep state of Democratic bureaucrats. Many agencies lost experts in a range of fields during the Trump era, and Biden has pledged to revitalize the workforce, the daily reported.

“President Biden has made an excellent choice in his nomination of Ahuja to serve as OPM director,” Congresswoman Judy Chu said. “With over two decades of experience serving in government, non-profit and philanthropic sectors, Kiran is uniquely qualified to lead OPM at this critical juncture as we work to build a federal workforce that reflects the full diversity of our country,” she said. “As the former chief of staff to the director of OPM and the former executive director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders under the Obama administration, she will bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to OPM that will enable her to hit the ground running on day one,” Chu added.

Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, said Ahuja is a civic-minded leader and an outstanding choice for this important job. “Her exceptional qualifications include more than two decades of non-profit leadership and public service, including at OPM and the White House, and a track record of solving human capital issues through innovation and collaboration,” he noted.

A New Phase for Eye Foundation of America, Founded By Dr. V K Raju

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Profile 0

Renowned ophthalmologist and president and founder of the Eye Foundation of America, Dr. VK Raju’s crusade for the past four decades has been to achieve his vision of a world without avoidable blindness. In 1977, he began traveling home to India to offer his services as an ophthalmologist to those who could not afford, or access, desperately needed eye care. The Eye Foundation of America founded by an Indian-American physician, is entering a new phase in its mission of ending avoidable blindness by collaborating with GAPIO (Global Association of Physicians of Indian Origin) and AAPI (American Association of Physicians of India Origin). These preventive services and medical and surgical interventions were delivered in the form of eye camps in the early days, and the EFA was initially founded to allow for easier transfer of state-of-the-art equipment and medicine from the United States to India. As the Foundation matured, it became so much more. The EFA is now a global organization responsible for treating millions of patients, performing hundreds of thousands of surgeries, and training hundreds of eye care professionals to join in the global fight against preventable blindness. The EFA’s work spans 30 countries over several continents. One focus of current outreach efforts is in the prevention of diabetes. Diabetes-related complications typically strike during the prime of life and include the development of cataracts at an earlier age than normal, a two-fold increased risk of glaucoma, and small blood vessel damage (i.e., diabetic retinopathy). Retinopathy can cause blindness; however, early detection and treatment can prevent blindness in up to 90% of cases. The International Diabetes Foundation estimates that 20% of the diabetic world population resides in India, approximately 61.3 million diabetics. In 2018, 34.2 million Americans had diabetes. There are 229,000 people with diabetes in West Virginia and 8.3% of adults are borderline diabetic. West Virginia is ranked the #2 state for deaths involving diabetes. According to Dr. Raju, the prevalence of diabetes among Indians in India and West Virginians in the United States continues to rise rapidly, and in many ways, the diabetes epidemic in West Virginia is similar to that of India, as the populations share similar characteristics: they tend to be rural, poor, and underserved. Born in Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh, Raju earned his medical degree from Andhra University and completed an ophthalmology residency and fellowship at the Royal Eye Group of Hospitals in London. The Indian American physician is board certified in ophthalmology, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and the American College of Surgeons. He moved to the United States in 1976 and has since resided in Morgantown, West As Dr. Raju points out, prevention is more beneficial than disease management, and lifestyle changes can be preventive. His organization’s programs, which aim at prevention through education and lifestyle modifications, include the 100,000 Lives campaign in India and the WV Kids Farmer’s Market Program in West Virginia. A child in India undergoes vision screening Project in Aragonda, Andhra Pradesh. Photo courtesy Eye Foundation of America The goal in India is to reach at least 100,000 rural diabetic Indians suffering with or at risk of diabetic retinopathy, where it is believed that 51% of diabetics are undiagnosed due to lack of access to medical care. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one child goes blind every minute and that 1.4 million children are blind worldwide. Many blind children reside in rural areas and live in poverty, thus restricting their access to preventative services and medical care. The prevalence of blindness is 10 times greater in India than in the U.S. and many cases of pediatric blindness can be prevented, Dr. Raju contends. However, 70–80% of children do not have access to an ophthalmologist. In an effort to provide affordable and accessible eye care, the EFA has helped to build the Goutami Eye Institute, which has a wing dedicated exclusively to children, and has launched an initiative to screen newborns for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). Approximately 3.5 million infants are born premature in India each year. The incidence of ROP is increasing in India due to improved neonatal survival, and ROP is the leading cause of infant blindness. The Goutami Eye Institute has screened more than 8,000 babies and treated over 600.

Dr. Amit Chakrabarty And Colleagues Volunteer In Odisha Pandemic Relief Efforts

February 24, 2021February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Profile 0

“There are very few Doctors from the state of Odisha in the United States,” says Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, Secretary of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), the largest ethnic medical association in the US. “I am one of the very few physicians from my home state, who are active and members of Odisha Doctors International Association (ODIA) and working towards expanding ODIA with members from across the globe. As the Treasurer of Odisha Society of Americas Health and Wellness Group, I am honored to work collaboratively with other members for the cohesive work the organization has been doing during the pandemic, while representing the great and historical state of Odisha at the national AAPI leadership”

Among the several initiatives, Dr. Chakrabarty and his colleagues in the US from the state of Odisha have initiated and established a new organization, Doctors of ODIA collaborating with local organizations and to provide healthcare to Odisha people, as pandemic impacts their livelihood.

Dr. Chakrabarty, the multi-talented, generous and hardworking leader of AAPI says, “With a deep sense of commitment to serve the people of Odisha, we have, under the leadership of Dr. Debashis Ray of Georgia, now expanded our organization to international standards with participation of 37 countries.”

Lamenting that Odisha has always been “under-represented and underserved and relatively a poor state in India with regards to medical collaborations in this country,” Dr. Chakrabarty says, “We are a small group of dedicated people who want to make a difference for our home state. For this reason I have put my heart and soul to make our state Medical Organization a great Resource to help our home state.”

The group of Doctors at Odisha Doctors International Association recently organized an international webinar on February 6th for the general public benefitting the local population in the state of Odisha to educate and answer the questions on Covid and vaccines. “I believe, we can make a huge difference by providing the people of Odisha necessary services and supplies hat will go a long way in the upliftment of the health status of the people of the state of Odisha.”

“The launch of the Covid 19 vaccine amidst the crisis and havoc created by the pandemic gives us all HOPE,” says Dr. Chakrabarty. “Team ODIA geared up to present in extensive details about the Coronavirus, the new mutant viruses and the different types of COVID-19 vaccines and global experience with the vaccine so far, answering the questions and concerns surrounding the Covid 19 vaccine.”

The global seminar lasting over three hours was inaugurated by Mr. Dhamendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas and was attended across zoom Facebook and YouTube in large numbers Odisha actor and humanitarian and ODIA brand ambassador Mr. Sabyasachi Mishra graced the seminar by his presence.

Physician teams of ODIA from 11 countries and presenters included from state of Odisha. Dr. Niranjan Mishra, Department of Public Health, who showed the audience on the efficient ways Odisha has been planning the vaccine rollout. Other participants were from UK Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Ireland, UAE, Oman, Maldives, in addition to USA.

In October of 2020 the Health and Wellness group of The Odisha Society of America’s donated a mobile Covid screening unit to the Health and Family Welfare department of the Government of Odisha. “The purpose of this unit is to provide screening at multiple places during the Covid pandemic and be available for use by the government in remote and rural areas of the state. The organization’s brand ambassador actor has represented us at all of our projects in Odisha and helped carry forward our Mission during the pandemic with sheer care and diligence,” says Dr. Chkarabarty. “Our second mobile Covid screening donated by one of our senior founder member of Health and Wellness group is also complete and has been in use by the Government of Odisha since the end of December 2020.”

In December 2020 the Health and Wellness group supported the Government of Odisha with 500 Dr. Diaz adult fingertip Pulse oximeters, to be used by healthcare workers in Odisha in remote areas lacking adequate triaging facilities, helping those severely compromised by Covid. “Our mission and vision is to continue to provide medical necessities and healthcare related support to the people of Odisha in future,” adds Dr. Chakrabarty.

“As an active member of ODIA, I am happy and immensely satisfied that I could be part of this noble organization that is committed to serve the poorest of the poor in India,” says, Dr. Chakrabarty, whose leadership qualities have come to be recognized by the larger AAPI general body, who have elected him to be the national AAPI Secretary in 2020, and he is looking forward to serve the largest ethnic medical organization as the Vice President and beyond, with his vision to take AAPI to newer heights.

“It is amazing how quickly these two years have passed by. With the help of Dr. Annu Terkonda, I helped revive the Indian Medical Council of St Louis (IMCStL), that had been dormant for more than 8 years to become one of the most vibrant chapters of the American Association of Physician of Indian Origin (AAPI), culminating in hosting the National AAPI governing body meeting during our upcoming Diwali Gala,” said Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, President of IMCStL 2018 and 2019, and currently the National AAPI Secretary said, after receiving an Award recognizing his contributions to the growth of AAPI and the revival of Indian Medical Council of St Louis. Dr. Suresh Reddy, Immediate Past President of AAPI honored Dr. Amit Chakrabarty during the Mini Convention held in Chicago on Saturday, September 26^th, 2020.

Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, who was honored with the National AAPI Distinguished Service Award 2018 and the President’s Award for Services in 2019 by the Indian American Urological Society, says, “I consider myself to be a leader and shine in the fact that I can get people motivated. I lead by example that motivates people. I am fun loving and have always striven to brush off any obstacles that come in the way.”

Dr. Chakrabarty has been the President of two AAPI subchapters, namely Alabama Association of Physicians of Indian Origin 2012-2014 and Indian Medical Council of St Louis 2018-2020 reviving them from obscurity and inactivity to make them one the most vibrant chapters of AAPI. Under his leadership, Alabama AAPI produced 13 out of the last 15 Regional directors and the St Louis Chapter hosted the most productive and successful AAPI governing body within 3 years of its revival from 10 years of inactivity. He also serves as the Chairman, Board of Trustees, Huntsville India Association and was the President, Indian Cultural Association of Birmingham, and led an Indian Delegation to Japan at the International Youth Year in 1985.

It’s been a long journey with American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) for Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, from being an ordinary member of the largest ethnic medical society in the United States to a Regional Leader, currently serving as the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees (BOT) of national AAPI, and now looking forward to lead the organization that he calls as his second family and has come to adore. “Since my membership to AAPI In 1997, for more than two decades I have been a dedicated foot soldier for the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin,” Dr. Amit Chakrabarty a Consultant Urologist, Poplar Bluff Urology, Past Chairman of Urologic Clinics of North Alabama P.C., and the Director of Center for Continence and Female Pelvic Health.

In his endeavor to play a more active role and commit his services for the growth and expansion of AAPI that represents the interests of over 100,000 Indian American physicians, Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, the Alabama-based Indian American Physician wants this noble organization to be “more vibrant, united, transparent, politically engaged, ensuring active participation of young physicians, increasing membership, and enabling that AAPI’s voice is heard in the corridors of power.”

A Patron Member of AAPI for 25 years, Dr. Chakrabarty has been an active AAPI Governing Body Member for over a decade. He has served AAPI in several capacities. He has served with distinction as an AAPI Regional Director from 2004 to 2006. There is hardly any Committee of AAPI that he was not part of in the past two decades. He was the Chair of AAPI Ethics and Grievances Committee in 2011-2012, and had served as the Chair of AAPI Journal Resource Committee in 2012-2013. He has served as a Member of AAPI IT committee, Journal Committee, Website Committee, Bylaws Committee, Alumni Committee, Ethics and Grievances Committee, and AAPI Charitable Foundation. “I have attended more than 100 AAPI events including Annual conventions, Governing Body meetings, Global Summits and Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in the past 20 years,” he recalls.

A multi-talented physician, Dr. Chakrabarty has not only showcased his musical talents at almost every major AAPI event, he was the Founder and Creator of AAPI’s Got Talent, at AAPI Annual Convention 2010 in Washington DC. He was the Founder and Conductor of “Mehfil” @ AAPI Annual Convention in Atlanta 2008, and has been conducting the ever popular AAPI’s Got Talent and Mehfil every year at Annual Conventions. “I love people and having good times,” he describes self. “I rarely get depressed or feel down with any failures and bounce right back. I believe in seeing the silver lining in each cloud. If life gives me lemons, I make lemonade!”

Dr. Chakrabarty has been a dreamer and devoted his talents for charity and noble deeds from childhood onwards. “Since my childhood I have been motivated for philanthropic activities that includes several school fund raising activities, organizing inter college meets in college forming a musical group in India and here primarily for fund raising.” And, as an ardent and active member of AAPI, Dr. Chakrabarty has continued these noble deeds as an adult.

One of the major goals for AAPI in recent years has been the financial stability of AAPI. Describing fund raising as his strength, he points out to his special talents and skills in raising money for AAPI in the past two decades. He says with pride that “I have been a leader in Fund Raising for AAPI and the several causes we have committed to support.”

He organized and raised funds during AAPI-Mahadevan show in Atlanta, raising almost $300,000 for AAPI in 2013. Other concerts/events he has helped organize and raise funds include: The 10 city Sukhwinder Singh Tour, 9 City Talat Aziz Fund, Pankaj Udhas Show, Hema Malini Concert, , as well as towards AAPI Hurricane Harvey Fund by conceiving and organizing “musical performance by my group Geetanjali Music.”

In addition, “I had spearheaded a fund rising in 2013 at Huntsville, Alabama collecting almost $80,000 for AAPI scholarship fund and National AAPI childhood obesity awareness program. Many of these events/concerts I had organized myself, spending my own money for travel and logistics.” Contributing his personal money as seed money for AAPI, he had single-handedly spearheaded planning a fund-raising tour called “DADA vs DADA” for AAPI Charitable Foundation in 2005. The show did not take place due to Hurricane Katrina devastating the region.

Recognizing the role of Young Physicians in AAPI, Dr. Chakrabarty wants to invest heavily in Medical Student/Residents and Young Physician (MSR/YPS) section of AAPI and in giving them leadership roles in mainstream AAPI, which will create more enthusiasm in our young members towards their parent organization. Without them there will be no AAPI in 20 years. “Give some prime time slots in the main convention to AAPI YPS, at least one night main stage should be devoted to and managed by them,” he suggests.

Realizing how hard it is for the physicians in India to come to the US for training, Dr. Chakrabarty “raised almost $100,000 for the Society of Indian American Clinical Urology for a scholarship fund for Clinical Indian Urologists to come for a month training in US.” He participated in two back to back fund raising shows 2015 and 2016 for the Hindu Temple of St. Louis raising more than $ 300,000 each year, featuring

Geetanjali musical group’s performance.

A physician with compassion, brilliance, and dedication, Dr. Chakrabarty has excelled in every role he has undertaken. As an educator at AAPI’s CMEs and Workshops, he has authored several articles/publications in Medical Journals, Chair of Entertainment Committee, and as a Founder member of Geetanjali Music Group (www.geetanjalimusic.com) that performs fund raising shows in several AAPI governing body and state chapter meetings, this AAPI leader has given his best for AAPI.

Another goal he wants to pursue for AAPI is to “Continue partnership in health care education and provide economic and material aid across the globe, working towards making AAPI, along with Indian physicians in other countries, a global health leader. I want AAPI to be a part of the decision-making process of World Health Organization and United Nations health policies especially those affecting south Asians.”

Dr. Chakrabarty says, he wants to have AAPI Charitable Foundation to be the main frame of AAPI make it more accountable. Making our noble efforts known to the society is important, he says, “We need to make their services more prominently advertised. Anytime we do press conference we use primarily them as example of what we are doing but we do not give them the support that they need.”

As a leader of AAPI, Dr. Chakrabarty wants to “form a separate political action committee (PAC) and make it financially sound so that AAPI can hire lobbyists on Capitol Hill who will help to move forward policies that are important to AAPI. VISA issues for our colleagues should top the list.”

A Gandhian at heart, Dr. Chkarabarty says, “I have always believed in Gandhiji’s principles “Satyameva Jayate” (Truth always wins). I am a Bengali from Odisha and have lived in small AAPI subchapters like Alabama and Missouri, I have no special state or chapter affiliation, I take pride in reaching across the aisle and have friends from all states and backgrounds not only in AAPI but also in my personal life participating in all ethnic festivities as my friends from Huntsville can testify.”

“I have the diverse experience to achieve each of these goals,” Dr. Chakrabarty says with confidence. “Having been a member and leader of AAPI for over two decades, I have perfected the skills necessary to move AAPI forward through the office of AAPI’s national Secretary. My mission/goal in life is to leave back a legacy of work that people will remember me fondly and proudly after I am gone.”

Eight Persons of Indian Origin on TIME’s 100 Most Influential People

February 24, 2021February 25, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Profile, Women 0

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Rishi Sunak, Apoorva Mehta, Vijaya Gadde, Shikha Gupta, Rohan Pavuluri, Chandra Shekhar Aazad, Ranga Dias are among the 100 Most Influential People on the prestigious TIME’s List for the year 2021 and Beyond, who are “emerging leaders who are shaping the future.”

The 2021 TIME100 Next, released on Wednesday, is an expansion of TIME’s flagship TIME100 franchise of the most influential people in the world and highlights 100 emerging leaders who are shaping the future. “Everyone on this list is poised to make history. And in fact, many already have,” Dan Macsai, the editorial director of the TIME100, said.

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan

When you’re a minority woman with your own show, you gotta represent. It’s a tough job to be in that spotlight, where you are scrutinized for your every action, but it’s exhilarating too. People come up to you at the airport or online and say those three magic words: “I feel seen.” It’s a huge responsibility—and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is exactly the kind of talented young woman who is up to the task.

While she might come off as a carefree teen in her hilarious TikToks and Instagram videos, Maitreyi—who plays the lead role in Never Have I Ever—is a gifted comic actress. She studies her craft and takes it seriously. Moreover, she’s an artist who cares deeply about the material she’s performing, and what it’s saying. She has an activist’s heart and wants to use her platform to help others.

What’s most extraordinary about Maitreyi is that when you’re with her, you think you’re simply talking to a cool, smart teenager, but later, when you see her work onscreen, you realize you were actually interacting with a great artist at the beginning of her journey.

(By Kaling, an actor, writer and producer and the co-creator of Never Have I Ever)

Rishi Sunak

Little more than a year ago, Rishi Sunak was an unknown junior minister in the British government. But after the 40-year-old former hedge-fund partner was appointed to lead Britain’s Treasury in February 2020, he quickly became the benevolent face of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, approving large handouts for many citizens whose jobs were disrupted by the virus. (The already unemployed and self-employed received less support.) Sunak also oversaw a policy that, when infections were low over the summer, subsidized dining out at restaurants in an attempt to revive the economy. The perceived generosity—and his youthful charm—earned him a legion of fans, but his policy was blamed when cases of COVID-19 began to rise shortly after. Critics also point out that because he has consistently advocated for early relaxation of lockdown rules, Sunak bears perhaps more responsibility than most for Britain’s failures in responding to the virus, which has left more than 115,000 people dead—the fifth highest toll in the world. Nonetheless, Sunak remains the country’s most popular politician, according to the pollster YouGov. And he’s the oddsmakers’ favorite to be Britain’s next Prime Minister. (By Billy Perrigo)

Apoorva Mehta

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Instacart faced a tidal wave of orders, as people with means opted en masse to pay the service’s workers to buy groceries for them. Apoorva Mehta, the company’s 34-year-old founder and CEO, calls that period a “wartime moment”: “We just didn’t have enough shoppers.” Instacart went on a hiring binge in March 2020, bringing on 300,000 gig workers in a matter of weeks; the next month, it announced it would hire a quarter-million more.

But as usage soared, Instacart faced new criticism about the way it treated its workers, including labyrinthine sick-pay policies, frequent rule changes for shoppers and demanding performance metrics. And after pouring more than $20 million into a controversial ballot initiative in California, Instacart—alongside other firms such as Uber and Lyft—decisively won that bid last fall to avoid classifying their workers as employees under state law.

Mehta says, “This is going to be a conversation that we’re going to have as a society over the next decade or so,” about the gig economy: “The ecosystem that we want to build is one that recognizes that flexibility is going to be an important part of people’s work.”In the meantime, Instacart—which raised more than $500 million in venture-capital funding last year—continues to expand. “The smartphone is the supermarket of the future,” Mehta says. “We are going to help co-create that.” (By Alejandro de la Garza)

Vijaya Gadde

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was on a private island in the Pacific when he found out President Trump had been suspended from his platform. Conveying the news, on Jan. 6, was Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top lawyer and head of policy. In a phone call, first reported by the New York Times, Gadde told Dorsey that the decision had been taken to reduce the risk of further violence after the attack on the Capitol earlier that day. Within two days, Gadde and a team of other employees had persuaded a hesitant Dorsey to ban Trump permanently.

Gadde, 46, is one of Twitter’s most powerful executives. Her boss, Dorsey, has delegated to her Twitter’s content-moderation decisions; she was the architect of the 2019 decision to ban all political advertising, and is responsible for the warning labels that Twitter applied to COVID-19 and election-interference misinformation in 2020. While Twitter is still home to much misinformation and harassment, Gadde’s influence is slowly turning the company into one that sees free speech not as sacrosanct—but as just one human right among many that need to be weighed against one another.

(By Billy Perrigo)

Shikha Gupta

In a crisis, small acts can make a big impact. And in extraordinary times, ordinary people, driven by service, can do extraordinary things. The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were some of the darkest in America’s history. A leadership vacuum from the White House contributed to health care professionals across the country lacking the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe and save lives.

Dr. Shikha Gupta wasn’t on the White House Task Force. She wasn’t a governor or a member of Congress. She held no title other than doctor and citizen. But when she and her colleagues saw a need—and a hashtag—they met the moment and took action. Powered by a dedicated coalition of medical professionals and other team members, the Get Us PPE organization—where Gupta is the executive director—has helped distribute more than 6.5 million pieces of PPE to frontline workers.

Their fight, like this pandemic, is not done. But across the country, millions of people working to save lives can do so with confidence because of Gupta and her colleagues’ small acts and incredible impact.

(By Kim, a Democratic Congressman from New Jersey

Chandra Shekhar Aazad

Chandra Shekhar Aazad, 34, is a Dalit—a member of India’s most oppressed caste group. The movement he leads, the Bhim Army, runs schools to help Dalits escape poverty through education. It also practices a distinct brand of assertiveness, sweeping into villages on loud motorbikes to protect victims of caste-based violence and organizing provocative demonstrations against discrimination.

In September 2020, when police in the state of Uttar Pradesh delayed investigation of the fatal gang-rape of a 19-year-old Dalit woman, allegedly perpetrated by four dominant-caste men, Aazad and the Bhim Army spearheaded a campaign for justice. The protests and public outcry that followed eventually led to the accused rapists’ arrests. (They deny the charges.) Aazad has also lent his support to several other progressive movements, including recently to farmers protesting against corporate agricultural reforms.

He hopes to turn the reach of the Bhim Army—and his own growing popularity—into wins at the ballot box, and in March 2020 launched a political party. Its first real test comes during elections next year in Uttar Pradesh, where Hindu nationalists are politically dominant.

Despite the Bhim Army’s muscular stance, Aazad has also cultivated an aura of charismatic approachability through deft use of social media; even Aazad’s luxuriant mustache—a style seen by some dominant castes as a status symbol—is a form of resistance. By challenging the notion that Dalits should be deferential, says Dhrubo Jyoti, a Dalit journalist at the Hindustan Times, Aazad and the Bhim Army “have visually and psychologically changed the pitch of caste resistance in India.”

Rohan Pavuluri

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to put Americans in financial distress, more and more people have lost jobs, incurred expensive medical bills and faced other hardships. Filing for personal bankruptcy can be an effective way to eliminate debt and re-enter the economy, but high legal fees and complex paperwork can make it difficult to seek that relief, especially for low-income families. That’s why, in 2018, 25-year-old Rohan Pavuluri founded Upsolve, a nonprofit that offers a free online tool to help users fill out bankruptcy forms on their own. To date, Upsolve has helped U.S. users relieve more than $300 million in debt. “We’ve found a way to use technology to address a civil rights injustice at scale,” Pavuluri says. (By Mariah Espada)

Ranga Dias

Let’s be clear: hoverboards, magnetic levitation trains and resistance-free power lines are not coming this year or next. But thanks to Ranga Dias, they’re closer than they ever were. Those technologies (and many more) rely on developing new superconductors: materials through which energy can move with no resistance.

The catch is that supercold temperatures have long been necessary for superconductors to work, making them impractical. So Dias, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Rochester, came up with a solution that could pave the way for future innovations: a room-temperature superconductor that’s superdense instead of supercold.

Dias developed a material made of hydrogen, sulfur and carbon, squeezed at a pressure equivalent to 2.5 million atmospheres. The extreme compression eliminates electrical resistance, allowing energy to traverse with ease. Dias is aware of the breakthrough nature of his work. “People have been trying to develop superconductors for a century,” he says. They missed their chance in the 20th. In the 21st, thanks to Dias, they just might succeed. (By Jeffrey Kluger)

Preeti Sinha Is UNCDF Executive Secretary

February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

An Indian American investment and development banker has been appointed as the Executive Secretary of UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).

The New York-headquartered organization named Preeti Sinha has one of its highest leadership ranks in the institution. Her tenure as UNCDF Executive Secretary commenced on Monday, February 15.

In a statement, it said that she will “oversee the organization’s efforts to deliver scalable impact in order to make the international financial architecture work for the world’s frontier and pre-frontier markets; with a specific emphasis on supporting sustainable development for women, youth, small and medium-sized enterprises, smallholder farmers, and other traditionally underserved communities.”

Sinha said her goal would be to make ‘C’ in UNCDF to be “highly catalytic in mobilizing manifold the public and private finance for the LDCs it serves and in developing a new era of engagement with capital markets in 2021 and onwards.”

Sinha succeeds Judith Karl, who retired in February after concluding her 30-year career in the United Nations, the agency said.

Welcoming Sinha, UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner said: “UNCDF’s support for the world’s Least Developed Countries is critical, and I look forward to continuing the strong partnership between our organizations into the future.

Sinha will lead UNCDF’s work to harness the untapped growth potential of the LDCs, to enable and empower communities, local governments and small businesses to address the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic while building more resilient and inclusive economies, the agency said.

As Executive Secretary, Sinha will oversee UNCDF’s last mile’ finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

She has three decades of global experience across investment and development finance during which she managed institutional public and private development capital.

The UNCDF statement said Sinha served as CEO and President of FFD Financing for Development LLC, a specialist development finance firm in Geneva, focusing on resource mobilization, donor relations, innovative capital markets, partnerships, strategy, business development, and impact investment advisory to finance the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Previously, she managed the YES Global Institute, a practicing private sector think-tank for socio-economic development in New Delhi, building the impact investment ecosystem in India, the agency said, adding that she also served in senior resource mobilization roles at the African Development Bank.

Sinha graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Executive Education program in Public Financial Management. She holds a Master’s in Global Leadership from the World Economic Forum and a Master’s in Public and Private Management (MPPM)/MBA from the Yale School of Management.

She is an alumnus of Dartmouth College, where she completed her Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Computer Science. UNCDF “makes public and private finance work for the world’s 46 least developed countries (LDCs) to harness their untapped growth potential.”

Its program “help to empower women, and are designed to catalyze larger capital flows from the private sector, national governments and development partners, for maximum impact towards the internationally agreed developments goals.

Usha Rao-Monari Appointed UN Under Secretary General

February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed investment professional Usha Rao-Monari as an Under Secretary General and the associate administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

The announcement on Wednesday said that she has over 30 years of investment experience in infrastructure and is a senior adviser with investment company Blackstone’s Infrastructure Group.

The UNDP is the main UN organisation to promote the UN’s development agenda with international cooperation. With a budget of about $3 billion, it works in around 170 countries and territories on eradicating poverty and reducing inequalities.

Rao-Monari, a Delhi University graduate with a master’s degree from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management, Mumbai, has been the CEO of Global Water Development Partners.

She also was the director of the Sustainable Business Advisory Group at the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.

She also holds a master’s degree in International Affairs and Finance from Columbia University.

Rao-Monari joins several Indians working in the top echelons of the UN. They include Atul Khare, the Under Secretary General for operational support; and Assistant Secretary General Chandramouli Ramanathan, who is also the controller, Anita Bhatia, who is also the Deputy Executive Director of UN-Women, and Satya S. Tripathi, who is also the head of the New York office of the United Nations Environment Programme.

Delhi Police Arrest Disha Ravi In Toolkit On Farmer Protests

February 18, 2021February 18, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

A 21-year-old climate activist from Bengaluru was arrested by Delhi Police in connection with the ‘toolkit‘ on farmer protests, which was shared on Twitter by teen climate activist Greta Thunberg. Divulging details, the Delhi Police later said in a statement Disha was the “key conspirator” in the formulation and dissemination of the document. She collaborated with pro-Khalisatani Poetic Justice Foundation to “spread disaffection against Indian state” and also shared the doc with Thunberg.

“Disha Ravi, arrested by CyPAD Delhi Police, is an Editor of the Toolkit Google Doc & key conspirator in document’s formulation & dissemination. She started WhatsApp Group and collaborated to make the toolkit doc. She worked closely with them to draft the doc. In this process, they all collaborated with pro-Khalistani Poetic Justice Foundation to spread disaffection against the Indian State. She was the one who shared the Toolkit Doc with Greta Thunberg,” Delhi Police statement read.

“Later, she asked Greta to remove the main Doc after its incriminating details accidentally got into public domain. This is many times more than the 2 lines editing that she claims,” it added.

The Police said they arrested Disha Ravi from Bengaluru on Saturday and was produced at the Patiala court on Sunday. Anil Mittal, Additional PRO Delhi Police said, “ Ravi has been remanded to police custody for 5 days. The Special Cell is investigating the conspiracy behind the google document- Toolkit. They found that Ravi was one of the editors of the toolkit and also a key conspirator in the document’s formulation and dissemination.”

Disha Ravi, a graduate of Mount Carmel College, is one of the founders of Fridays for Future India. Fridays for Future is an international movement of school students who skip classes on Fridays to join demonstrations demanding politicians to act against climate change. It gained widespread popularity after Thunberg protested outside the Swedish parliament in 2018.

On February 4, the police cyber-crime cell of the Delhi Police registered an FIR on charges of “sedition”, “criminal conspiracy” and “promoting hatred” against the creators of the ‘toolkit’. The police said that the sequence of events in the farmer protests, including the January 26 violence during the tractor rally, was a “copycat” of the alleged action plan shared in the toolkit.

Special CP (Crime Branch) Praveer Ranjan said a preliminary enquiry indicated that the toolkit in question was created by “pro-Khalistani organisation” Poetic Justice Foundation.

A toolkit is a document created to explain an issue and is used by online groups to amplify their voices and guide their movements in specific ways.

A Delhi court on Sunday sent Ravi to five days police custody. During the hearing, Ravi broke down inside the courtroom and told the judge that she had edited only two lines and that she wanted to support the farmers’ protest.

Ravi is one of the founders of Fridays for Future (FFF) India. FFF is a global movement of school students that began in August 2018, after Thunberg and other young activists sat in front of the Swedish parliament every schoolday for three weeks, to protest against the lack of action on the climate crisis.

Delhi Police said they have identified over 300 handles that are spreading “disaffection and ill-will” against the government. Centre had recently asked Twitter to remove 1,178 accounts, which it said were spreading misinformation on farmers’ agitation.

Praveen Tailam Elected Chairman of the TiE Global Board of Trustees for 2021

February 18, 2021February 18, 2021 Ramchandram DCommunity, Profile 0

Praveen Tailam, elected as Chairman of the TiE Global Board of Trustees. He is the first-ever Hyderabadi to reach that coveted post. Disclosing this in a press note issued in Hyderabad today, TiE Hyderabad said, Praveen Tailam heads TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Global, the largest entrepreneurs’ not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship globally through mentoring, networking, education, funding and incubation.

Praveen is well-known in the TiE community as an entrepreneur, investor, startup advisor, speaker, mentor, and philanthropist. He was previously the Vice-Chairman of TiE Global Board in 2018. After running his own consulting company, Praveen’s interest in promoting startups drove him to lead TiE Boston Angels, a successful angel group in the U.S., and become TiE Boston chapter president in 2016. Praveen also operates multiple dental offices in New Hampshire and Maine. Praveen advises and invests in several startups.

On being elected as Chairman, Praveen said, “The year 2020 has been a challenging one, and entrepreneurs, particularly the TiE members, reinvented themselves rapidly to the changing business landscape. TiE Global Summit in December 2020, hosted by my hometown chapter, TiE Hyderabad, was a big success with a record participation of over 30,000 attendees. It is a testimony to the strength of TiE. We will continue to boost collaboration across chapters and members worldwide. TiE is well-positioned to advise state and central governments in proposing business-friendly policies to stimulate startup ecosystems and enable cross-border investments”.

Congratulating Praveen, Manohar Reddy, CEO of Feuji Inc. and President of TIE Hyderabad said, “It is a matter of great pride for us that a Hyderabadi has become a Chairman of the TiE Global organization. I look forward to impactful partnerships this year and I am Sure having a Hyderabadi as global president will help. TIE strives to support startup founders’ journey by connecting them to global entrepreneurs, mentors, access to investors and corporations that enables growth and scale that is essential for any company to leapfrog to the next level”.

Praveen grew up in Domalguda, in Hyderabad, the Capital city of Telangana State is a proud alumnus of The Hyderabad Public School, Ramanthapur from the 1986 batch and the co-founder of HPSR US Alumni Association. “Praveen was the school’s cricket team captain and on the prefectorial leadership. Praveen truly represents our school’s ethos of nurturing global leaders and is instrumental in launching the entrepreneurship program in collaboration with TiE for our high schoolers. We are proud of his achievements.”, stated Ashwin Rao, Secretary, The HPSR Alumni Association.

The TiE Global Board comprises leaders and domain experts from around the world. Gita Dang from New Delhi, P.K. Gulati from Dubai, Pradeep Udhas from Mumbai, Smita Siddhanti from Washington D.C., Dinesh Dhamija from London, C.N. Madhusudan from Atlanta, Tariq Khan from New York, B.J. Arun (vice-chairman) from Silicon Valley. Also on the Board are Ravi Narayan, CEO T-Hub Hyderabad; Chief Innovation Officer, Govt. of Telangana; and former Global Director, Microsoft for Start-ups. Kali Prasad Gadiraju, Chairman and M.D. of Qubit A.I. is the former Managing Partner at E.Y. and served as President on TiE Hyderabad board.

TiE was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and senior professionals with roots in the Indus region. TiE has 61 Chapters in 14 countries with more than 15,000 members worldwide. It is a matter of great pride for Hyderabad that its son of the soil reached such a top position. TiE’s focus area is to enable the next generation of entrepreneurs. It connects the entrepreneurship ecosystem from early-stage entrepreneurs, serial entrepreneurs, and professionals at leading corporations, venture capital and angel investors.

TiE Global programs include TYE (TiE Young Entrepreneurship) for high-schoolers, TiE University – for university students, TiE Global Angels and TiE India Angels funding early and growth-stage startups, TiE Women provides opportunities for women entrepreneurs and TIE Access is a program to serve underserved communities and minorities.

TiE Global has also launched ten special interest groups in various domains, including Education, Healthcare, Emerging Tech, Fintech, Gaming & Media, Hospitality & Tourism, Manufacturing, Social Entrepreneurship, and Sustainability. The TiE Global Summit conference has empowered various stakeholders in the startup community in Asia and worldwide. The TiE Global Entrepreneur Awards is a new initiative that recognizes and celebrates outstanding entrepreneurs around the world.

Is India’s social justice paradigm under threat?

February 17, 2021February 18, 2021 George AbrahamNation India, Profile 0

In a letter written by Fr. Stan Swamy SJ, from the prison, said, “Dear friends: Peace! Though I do not have many details, from what I have heard, I am grateful to all of you for expressing your solidarity support. I am in a cell approximately 13 feet x 8 feet, along with two more inmates. It has a small bathroom and a toilet with an Indian commode. Fortunately, I am given a western commode chair. Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves, and Arun Ferreira are in another cell. During the day, when cells and barracks are opened, we meet with each other. From 5.30 pm to 06.00 am and 12 noon to 03.00 pm, I am locked up in my cell with two inmates. Arun assists me to have my breakfast and lunch. Vernon helps me with bath. My two inmates help during supper in washing my clothes and give massage to my knee joints. They are from very poor families. Please remember my inmates and my colleagues in your prayers. Despite all odds, humanity is bubbling in Taloja prison.”

One may genuinely wonder why this 83-year-old Jesuit Priest afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, who has dedicated his entire life for the upliftment of the poor, is languishing in jail! What horrific deed has he committed to warrant such a treatment from the authorities? It says a lot more about today’s political climate in India than the fate of one single old frail man who had to approach the Bombay special court for permission to use a straw and sipper cup because of his disability. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which arrested Mr. Fr. Stan, has sought 20 days’ time from the court to respond!

There is truly little doubt that his arrest is a political witch hunt. He is known for his staunch defense on behalf of the indigenous tribal people across the tribal belt and advocated fiercely for their land rights. His work in terms of educating people about their rights and helping to pass laws to protect the land rights of the tribal population is quite phenomenal. Article 13 (3) (a) of the Indian constitution empowers the tribal people to assert their traditional self-rule in those areas inhabited by them. These constitutional provisions are remarkably like the treaties governing Indian reservations in the United States.

For long, the Modi Government has wanted to diminish these rights in favor of corporates or other vested interests. In May 2016, the BJP Government passed two legislations that enabled the transfer of tribal land to commercial interests. That legislation set in motion a struggle (Pathalgadi movement) between the tribal people and the government, resulting in a brutal crackdown by the authorities. Moreover, the movement was branded as anti-national, and hundreds of people were arrested and charged under the sedition laws.

The government went another step further and linked the movement to ‘Maoists,’ which is labeled as anti-national and dedicated to the overthrow of the elected governments. Fr. Stan, who has been a vocal critic of the government policies and defender of the tribal rights over these lands, was also charged with plotting the government’s violent overthrow. To bolster their case, NIA, in their charge sheet, accused Fr. Stan as responsible for the violence in Bhima Koregaon in Maharashtra in 2017. He was not present in the rally celebrating British and Dalit forces’ victory over Brahmin Peshwas.

Historically, the BJP/RSS strategy resisted real enlightenment for the oppressed people. The feudalistic and casteist mindset under which they operate detests any individual or group that educates and inspires people from those impoverished conditions of their rights and privileges. Their anti-conversion campaign is often seen as camouflage to prevent the Tribal population like this one in Chhattisgarh ever learning of their true worth as human beings but condemning them forever in a subservient role to the upper echelons of society. What Fr. Stan has done was to help this vulnerable population demand equal justice and freedom from servitude.

Unfortunately, it is a Jesuit priest, and any person in India, whether journalists, writers, artists, religious leaders, students, or even politicians, can be branded as anti-nationals or terrorists if they dare to speak out against Prime Minister Modi or the BJP government’s crony capitalist policies. A common tactic is to brand all peace activists as a front inspired by ‘Maoists’ or Christian missionaries. By arresting Fr. Stan, they are also conveying a message that even a Church can be branded as anti-national to the great delight of the Sangh Parivar organizations.

This branding is quite expansive now as we learn that 13th February 2021 marks the civil rights lawyer and activist Sudha Bharadwaj’s 900 days in detention. She took cases that many other attorneys refused to touch and represented workers wrongfully dismissed by companies, illegally evicted villagers from their land, and women who alleged sexual assault by security forces.

According to a Washington Post report, Police raided her house and took computers and phones, and demanded passwords for email accounts. Then they arrested Bharadwaj under an anti-terrorism statute accusing her of a plot to commit violent actions. Since 2018, Sudha and 15 other activists, writers, and lawyers have been arrested under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and accused them of having links with the ‘Maoist’ group. In a charge filed remarkably similar to Fr. Stan’s, it has been alleged that she and other human rights defenders conspired to incite Dalits in Bhima Koregaon village in Pune, Maharashtra. It fits a pattern now where many people across the country are getting arrested who are either critics of the government policies or outspoken advocates for India’s most disadvantaged, whether they are indigenous tribal peoples or Dalits.

Born in Boston to a distinguished economist, she went to IIT Kanpur to study Mathematics. Later, she moved to an iron mining ore town in Chhattisgarh and supported worker’s rights and safety while challenging land acquisition by major corporations and seeking justice for extrajudicial killings by police officers. Bharadwaj has denied the charges and said it was “totally concocted’. Obviously, these arrests appear to be an affront to the rule of law and infringing of the citizen’s constitutional rights. It has been said that a right without a remedy is no right at all.

According to press reports, Sudha’s health situation continues to deteriorate in prison. The 59-year-old suffers from diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, making her susceptible to Covid-19 in the cramped prison. Her bail plea is being rejected, and she has been denied books and Newspapers in jail. Her father passed away during her time in jail. In January, the UN Human Rights office expressed serious concern about the human rights defenders’ detention and urged the Indian authorities to immediately release the detainees. According to Michele Bachelet, the UNHCHR commissioner expressed concern over using ‘vaguely defined laws’ to silence activists and government critics.

These two cases illustrate that India’s social justice paradigm is in danger. The regressive forces are busy staging a counter-revolution to destroy the social justice pillars: Freedom, Equality, Justice, and fraternity. Fr. Stan Swamy and Sudha Bharadwaj represent that social justice paradigm created and nurtured by modern India’s founding fathers. To those NRIs who demonstrated in the Streets in the U.S fighting for the release of Arnab Goswamy, an arrogant exclusionist, may I say that your silence on the detention of Stan Swamy and Sudha Bharadwaj is quite deafening!

(Writer is a former Chief Technology officer of the United Nations. The views expressed here are that of the author)

India’s Village Teacher Wins $1 Million Prize For World’s Most ‘Exceptional’ Educator

February 17, 2021February 17, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Profile 0

In 2010, Indian teacher Ranjitsinh Disale heard that one of his teenage female students was going to marry a man in his 30s.

“I directly went to the girl’s house and told her father, ‘You cannot do this,’ ” says Disale, 32, who currently teaches third- and fourth-graders at a government school in Paritewadi, a small village in western India.

When the father didn’t agree, Disale called the police because child marriage is illegal in India. Together they counseled the father. Finally, he called off the wedding.

It’s actions like this that helped earn Disale the title of the world’s most “exceptional teacher.”

In December, Disale won the $1 million Global Teacher Prize, an annual award sponsored by the Varkey Foundation, a U.K.-based nonprofit working to improve access to education for underprivileged children, and by UNESCO, the U.N. agency for education, science and culture. He was one of more than 12,000 teachers from over 140 countries nominated for the prize.

The organizations praise Disale for going above and beyond his job description. Over the years, he has learned a new language, invented ways to help students learn with technology and even endured attacks — all to ensure his students, especially girls, can keep learning.

“[Disale has] transformed the life chances of young girls,” the Varkey Foundation said in a statement. “The impact of [his] interventions has been extraordinary: There are now no teenage marriages in the village and 100% attendance by girls at the school.”

Disale was declared the winner at a virtual ceremony broadcast from London. When British actor and comedian Stephen Fry announced his name, Disale, at home in India, screamed in excitement and hugged his overjoyed parents seated on either side of him. Congratulatory messages poured in from politicians including former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan and even the Dalai Lama.

His students rejoiced, too.

“They were dancing in celebration and they kept saying, ‘Sir, we are proud of you,’ ” says Disale. “That’s the biggest moment for a teacher, I can’t express that feeling in words.”

Disale hadn’t always planned to be a teacher. He was studying to be an engineer but dropped out because of bullying by his peers. He enrolled in a teacher training course on his father’s suggestion and was posted to Paritewadi in 2009 for his first assignment.

His classroom was overrun by cows and buffaloes. A farmer had turned it into a cattle shed and refused to leave.

“I had to register a police complaint,” says Disale. “[The farmer] would shout at me and throw stones at my bike.”

Even bigger challenges lay ahead.

Most of Disale’s students come from low-income families who depend on farming. Many belong to tribal communities where early marriage is common.

“They feel that girls are just made for [marrying],” says Disale.

Disale also says many parents thought school was a waste of money for their kids because they see even educated people struggling to get jobs.

“They felt the better option is to take the children to the farm [to work] so that they get some experience,” says Disale.

So Disale set out to change their mindset. When his students didn’t show up to class, Disale says he would go to the fields to talk to their parents. He learned their native language Kannada to gain their trust and translated the curriculum from Marathi, a language some students did not speak, into Kannada.

To further boost student attendance, around 2010, he introduced technology in the classroom.

He bought a new laptop with money from his dad and would show movies and play songs for his young students. “When they went back home, they would start talking about it with their friends who would then get interested in coming to school,” says Disale.

Once he had his students’ attention, he would play educational videos and songs that covered topics in their curriculum.

But some parents were still not sending their kids, particularly girls, to school, he says.

So Disale came up with a way to get the school curriculum to the girls.

He started making digital versions of his lesson plans. He created PowerPoint presentations, translated educational videos from YouTube and made videos of his classroom lectures. He called parents with female students at home to drop by the school on the weekends so he could transfer the digital files from his laptop to their mobile devices. His elementary school students, many of whom are mobile savvy, could then use their parents’ devices to keep up with what Disale was teaching in class — and Internet connectivity, he says, is good in the village.

There was one problem. The files were sometimes not supported by the mobile devices or would get corrupted during the transfer. So in 2014, Disale devised a workaround: He would make the videos, links, audio files and homework available to download over the Internet using QR codes, or quick response codes. He would print stickers with the QR codes and distribute them among his students.

The students were particularly interested in videos of Disale teaching lessons that they had trouble understanding, says Disale. It was used not just by kids at home, but also by kids coming to school, too. If they had a doubt or question about what they learned in class, they could revisit Disale’s recorded lectures.

“It was like a miracle,” says Disale, adding that the academic performance of his students, especially girls, improved drastically.

For this reason, he proposed the idea of QR-coded textbooks to the government in Maharashtra, the state where Paritewadi is located. And in 2017, the government announced it would introduce textbooks with QR codes in the entire state. The codes link to supplementary teaching materials, such as explanatory videos, for students who need a bit more help in grasping concepts in the book.

As for Disale, the QR codes in the textbooks proved to be a blessing when schools closed during the coronavirus lockdown. His students were able to continue doing their work from home on mobile phones and switch to virtual learning easily.

“The lockdown has taught us that we cannot rely on traditional ways of teaching,” says Disale. “Technology should be an integral part of teaching.”

What differentiates Disale from other teachers is that he did not depend on the system but paved his own way to fulfill his role as a teacher, says Francis Joseph, co-founder of an education nonprofit called School Leaders Network. He has known Disale for several years.

Government schoolteachers in India often lack motivation, says Joseph, because they get paid whether students learn or not. No one questions them. Teacher truancy is also common. According to a 2016 World Bank report, nearly 24% of teachers in some 1,300 Indian villages surveyed were absent during unannounced visits.

“You just need some champions [like Disale] to lead a revolution in increasing the motivation and interest among other teachers,” says Joseph.

Disale says he’s now working on a project to promote world peace by connecting tens of thousands of students from conflict zones around the world. The Let’s Cross the Borders project is a six-week program in which students are matched with a “peace buddy” from another country via Skype. Students interact with their buddies, prepare presentations and listen to guest speakers together to understand their similarities.

When he was named the winner, Disale announced that he would share half of his $1 million prize with the other nine finalists who come from different parts of the world including Italy, Vietnam, Brazil and Nigeria. He says he will use his share of the prize to build a network of like-minded teachers in India who are passionate about innovation in learning.

“I want to see many Ranjitsinh Disales from India,” he says.

Elon Musk, The World’s Richest Man, Gets A Whole Lot Richer

February 17, 2021February 17, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Economy, Profile 0

For a CEO who receives no salary, Elon Musk’s 2020 payday reached sky-high levels. He received four grants to buy 8.4 million Tesla shares in 2020. After paying the exercise price, those blocks of stock options were each worth $6.2 billion at Wednesday’s closing price. The combined $24.8 billion value of those options alone is more than Musk was worth a year ago when Forbes calculated its billionaire’s list, when he was ranked as the world’s 31st richest person.

2021 and 2022 could be nearly as lucrative for him.

The company’s annual financial filing this week disclosed that Musk will probably receive three additional options grants this year, each as large and as lucrative as those he received in 2020.

At current values, those three options tranches would be worth $18.6 billion.

Analysts are now forecasting that Tesla’s 2022 financial results will likewise reach heights that would bring Musk three additional blocks of options. Tesla could hit one of those profit targets in 2021, which would mean Musk could match the four tranches of options he received last year.

Few investors are complaining about Musk’s pay.

The stock’s 743% rise in 2020 made it the stock market’s biggest winner, as well as one of the most valuable companies in the world. That has quieted most of the criticism he might have faced.

“The cachet of Tesla is Musk,” said Daniel Ives, tech analyst for Wedbush Securities. “The reason investors have not batted an eyelash is that due to Musk’s strategic direction, Tesla is on top of the EV [electric vehicles] mountain going to the golden age of EVs. And he’s put Tesla on the cusp of being a trillion-dollar market cap company.”

The rise in Tesla’s stock price, and his options to buy new shares, has made Musk the richest person on the planet, according to Bloomberg, surpassing Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos.

Unlike Musk, Bezos doesn’t receive stock options from Amazon, and he collected relatively modest salary of $81,840 in 2019, plus security services valued at $1.6 million a year. But rather than benefit from stock options or grants as do most CEOs, he benefits primarily from the rise of his Amazon shares.

Musk similarly owns 170 million Tesla shares outright, worth about $137.2 billion, in addition to those existing shares he has options to buy new ones. In fact, the nearly $123 billion gain in 2020 in the value of shares Musk already owns dwarfs the value of the additional options he received.

Musk, who bought a controlling stake in Tesla in 2004 when it was an upstart private company years from building its first car, takes no salary. Before his current lucrative compensation package he had an earlier version that paid him with options to buy 22.9 million split-adjusted Tesla shares for a price of $6.24 each. Those options are worth $18.3 billion today.

The options he received last year came from a second compensation package that was overwhelmingly approved by Tesla shareholders in 2018. It allows him to receive options to buy as many as 101 million split-adjusted shares of stock for $70 each. Those options can come in 12 separate, equally sized tranches.

If Tesla’s share price keeps climbing, so will the value of the options. In late May, when Tesla confirmed Musk received the first block of options for 2020, they were valued at “only” $770 million after the exercise price. Today they’re worth $6.2 billion.

Musk has not exercised any of his options. Executives typically exercise them when they are due to expire, or to free up cash. Musk has never sold Tesla shares.

Those options come at a cost to Tesla, although it’s a non-cash expense.

Stock-based compensation accounted for a $1.7 billion hit to Tesla’s bottom line last year. The company doesn’t break out how much of that was Musk’s or how much was stock for its other 70,750 employees.

The company makes stock widely available to its employees. Its filing said that “our compensation philosophy for all of our personnel reflects our startup origins, with an emphasis on equity-based awards.”

But the same filing says that the company does not match employees’ contributions to its 401(k) plans, in cash or in company stock.

When Musk was recently asked on Twitter about the lack of company match into 401(k) plans in the face of his own compensation package, he responded, “Everyone at Tesla receives stock. My comp is all stock/options, which I do not take off the table. That’s what you’re missing.”

Tesla said that Musk got so many options, so much sooner than expected, that it caused the spike in stock-based compensation expense. In 2019, stock-based compensation was about $900 million.

Musk received no options in 2019, but some of that $900 million was an expense Tesla booked because it believed that Musk would receive options in early 2020.

While the stock-based compensation doesn’t drain cash from Tesla’s coffers, it does change the company’s profit picture.

The company reported positive net income for the first time in 2020, earning $721 million. Critics point out that its profit was far less than the $1.6 billion Tesla received from the sale of regulatory credits to other automakers. They claim the company actually lost money on car sales, and it can’t depend on the revenue from the sale of those credits in the long term.

Without the $1.7 billion in stock based compensation, Tesla’s net income would exceed the gains from the sale of those regulatory credits. And Telsa critics would not have been able to claim it lost money selling cars.

Who Will Replace Jeff Bezos After He Steps Down As Amazon Chief Executive

February 11, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Economy, Profile 0

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has announced that he will step down as chief executive of the e-commerce giant that he started in his garage nearly 30 years ago. He will become executive chairman, a move he said would give him “time and energy” to focus on his other ventures.

Mr Bezos, who has a fortune of almost $200bn, will be replaced by Andy Jassy, who currently leads Amazon’s cloud computing business. The change will take place in the second half of 2021, the company said.

“Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it’s consuming. When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else,” Mr Bezos said in a letter to Amazon staff on Tuesday.

“As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions. I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring. I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have,” he added.

Mr Bezos, 57, has led Amazon since its start as an online bookshop in 1994. The firm now employs 1.3 million people globally and has its hand in everything from package delivery and streaming video to cloud services and advertising.

He’s amassed a fortune of $196.2bn, according to Forbes’ list of billionaires., making him the world’s richest man. However, Bloomberg’s billionaire index puts Tesla boss Elon Musk just ahead of him.

Amazon saw its already explosive growth skyrocket last year, as the pandemic prompted a surge in online shopping. The firm reported $386bn (£283bn) in sales in 2020, up 38% from 2019. Profits almost doubled, rising to $21.3bn.

In announcing the plans, Mr Bezos said he would continue to focus on new products and initiatives. “When you look at our financial results, what you’re actually seeing are the long-run cumulative results of invention,” he said. “Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition.”

The shake-up comes as Mr Bezos has developed an increasingly public profile. He has endured a public divorce, become a target for labour and inequality activists, and poured his wealth into other businesses, such as space exploration firm Blue Origin and the Washington Post newspaper.

‘Not leaving’

Amazon also faces increasing scrutiny from regulators, who have questioned its monopoly power. And its dominance in cloud computing is being increasingly challenged by other tech firms, such as Microsoft and Alphabet, parent company of Google and YouTube.

Mr Bezos’s decision to hand over the day-to-day operation of the company came as a surprise. But investors appeared unfazed, with little change in the firm’s share price in after-hours trade.

In a call with analysts to discuss the firm’s financial results, Amazon chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said: “Jeff is not leaving, he is getting a new job… The board is super active and important in Amazon’s success story.”

Mr Jassy, a Harvard graduate, has been with Amazon since 1997 and helped develop Amazon Web Services, which has long been seen as the profit engine of the company.

The division provides cloud computing and storage for governments and companies including McDonald’s and Netflix.

“Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence,” Mr Bezos said.

Sophie Lund-Yates, analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said it was “no accident” that Amazon is tapping the head of the cloud business to lead the company.

This is a real surprise. But you have to remember that Jeff Bezos himself is worth nearly $200bn.

And when you’re that rich imagine what you can do. Jeff Bezos has some pretty lofty ambitions outside of Amazon.

His Blue Origin company wants to “build a road to space”. He’s also sunk $10bn into Earth Fund, designed to help combat the effects of climate change.

Oh, and he also owns the Washington Post.

How will Amazon cope? Well, importantly, he’s not leaving. As executive chair and founder he’ll still exercise huge power over the company. However, stepping back will inevitably mean less influence.

His replacement – Andy Jassy – has been running Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s booming cloud business division. His rise to the top underscores how important this business has become to Amazon.

(Picture: Geek Wire)

Dr. Raj Panjabi to Lead Malaria Initiative By Biden Administration

February 11, 2021February 11, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Health, Profile 0

President Joe Biden has appointed Dr. Raj Panjabi, an Indian American physician and social entrepreneur originally from Liberia, to lead his Malaria Initiative, which runs programs in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

“After being sworn in this morning, I’m honored to share that I’ve been appointed by Joe Biden as the president’s Malaria Coordinator to lead the US president’s Malaria Initiative,” Panjabi wrote on Twitter Feb. 1. “I’m grateful for this chance to serve.”

“In the face of unprecedented crises, I am humbled by the challenges our country and our world faces to build back better. But as I have learned in America: we are not defined by the conditions we face, we are defined by how we respond,” Panjabi added in another tweet.

“My family and I arrived in America 30 years ago after fleeing civil war in Liberia. A community of Americans rallied around my family to help us build back our lives. It’s an honor to serve the country that helped build back my own life as part of the Biden-Harris Administration,” he wrote. “I’ve seen the relief on the faces of parents whose children survived malaria because they were treated with medicines and by health workers backed by its support,” he said.

Raj Panjabi fled Liberia during the country’s civil war at age nine, becoming a refugee in the US. He returned to Liberia as a medical student and in 2007, co-founded Last Mile Health. He has served as an assistant professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, an associate physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the CEO and co-founder of Last Mile Health, according to his profile on LinkedIn.

Raj Panjabi and the Last Mile Health team played a key role in the 2013-16 West Africa Ebola epidemic, helping train over a thousand frontline and community health workers and support the government of Liberia to lead its national Ebola Operations Centre. Raj Panjabi delivered testimony on the Ebola epidemic at the US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee.

As a doctor and public health professional who has cared for patients alongside the staff of the president’s Malaria Initiative, led by USAID and co-implemented with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Panjabi said: “I’ve been inspired by how they’ve responded to fight malaria, one of the oldest and deadliest pandemics, and saved lives around the world.”

He shared that this cause really hits home for him. “My grandparents and parents were infected with malaria while living in India. As a child in Liberia, I fell sick with malaria, and as a doctor serving in Africa, I have seen this disease take too many lives,” he said.

“I’ve seen how the Malaria Initiative and its partners have responded with resolve in the countries where it operates. I’ve seen the relief on the faces of parents whose children survived malaria because they were treated with medicines and by health workers backed by its support,” he went on to explain.

Panjabi is the co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Last Mile Health, which tackles the “last mile” — the final, critical step of delivering products or services to consumers — a conundrum for businesses and in health care, where last-mile problems hit poor regions especially hard, according to the organization’s website.

After escaping a civil war in his home country of Liberia at age 9, Panjabi returned as a 24-year-old medical student to serve the people he had left behind and co-founded Last Mile Health.

Last Mile Health partners with government to deploy, support, and manage networks of community health professionals and to integrate them into the public health system. With training in maternal and child health, family planning, treatment adherence and surveillance of epidemics, together with mentoring from nurse supervisors, these community health workers deliver quality healthcare to remote communities, the foundation noted.

In 2016, TIME Magazine named Panjabi to its annual list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” In 2017, he was named by Fortune magazine to its list of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.

8-Year-Old Indian Boy In Johns Hopkins ‘Brightest Students In The World’ List

February 3, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Profile 0

Advay Misra, 8, an Indian student in New York, has been named among 1,400 of the “brightest students in the world” by the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) in Baltimore which counts among its alumni the founders of Facebook and Google, Rhodes Scholars and MacArthur Fellows.

Hopkins said Misra, a student at PS 59 Beekman Hill International Elementary School, was honoured for “exceptional performance on the SAT, ACT, or similar assessment” taken by 15,000 students in grades two through eight as part of CTY’s Talent Search program. Test scores are based on above-grade level testing.

“It was a little hard…um, the verbal part but the mathematics part wasn’t as hard,” Misra told IANS, over phone. Misra said he took “some practice tests to get familiar” with the Johns Hopkins test but “didn’t have to do a lot of preparation.”

Misra credits his “mom!” for his academic smarts. The 8-year-old cheerfully rattled off his bucket list of favourite geek outs: “Reading, Python programming and Khan Academy videos.”

When contacted by IANS, Hopkins did not confirm how many Indians or Indian Americans took the test but said “several” students were living in India during the testing period.

More than 15,000 students from the US, Europe and 70 other countries in grades two through eight tested through CTY’s Talent Search over 12 months ending June 2020. Nearly 1,400 students finished in the top 9 per cent, like Advay Misra. Five test takers got a perfect score on the reading or math section. More than 160 testers under age 13 scored 700 or higher on the math or verbal section of the SAT.

“This is especially commendable in a year that has been difficult for students everywhere. The global pandemic has affected nearly every part of your lives, from daily school routines to the special celebrations you look forward to all year. Nonetheless, you have demonstrated outstanding academic potential, and we hope you and your family will take the time to celebrate it together,” said Dr. Virginia Roach, CTY’s Executive Director, in a prepared statement that IANS has reviewed.

According to the Hopkins CTY site, the center’s origin story goes back to the late 70s when a seventh grade boy from Baltimore had exhausted all options for math courses he could take at school by the time he was thirteen and a professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins then designed above grade level courses that could challenge gifted students around the world. (IANS)

(Picture: EWOKE TV)

Dr. Mathai Mammen, J&J’s Global Head Of Research And Development, Is Confident Of Its Covid Vaccine

February 3, 2021February 11, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Profile, Science 0

A third Covid-19 vaccine, one made by Johnson & Johnson, could be authorized for use in the United States in the near future. The vaccine was made through a collaboration of J&J’s Belgium-based vaccine division, Janssen Pharmaceutical, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and it works a bit differently.

The company will apply for an EUA “middle to late next week,” Dr. Mathai Mammen, Janssen’s global head of research and development, said during a call with reporters last week. The call was held along with officials from the National Institutes of Health. Janssen is the vaccine arm of Johnson & Johnson. If the vaccine is authorized for emergency use, Mammen said, “Our plan is to have supply immediately upon launch.”

Once an application is submitted, “The FDA really looks very, very carefully at the data in each age group and in each demographic group,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during the call.

Data about the single-shot vaccine released, and the company is now collating its data to apply to the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization. Here’s what’s known about how it works and how it will fit into the mix of vaccines.

How effective is it?

Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 single-shot vaccine was shown to be 66% effective in preventing moderate and severe disease in a global Phase 3 trial, the company announced Friday.

The vaccine is 85% effective overall at preventing hospitalization and death in all regions where it was tested.

Its efficacy against moderate and severe disease ranged from one country to another: 72% in the US, 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa. This was measured starting one month after the shot.

In South Africa, 95% of cases in the trial were due to a variant known as B.1.351, which is known to be more contagious and carries mutations that may make the virus less susceptible to the antibody immune response — including antibodies prompted by vaccination.

Even those who got moderate cases of Covid-19 in the trial tended to develop a milder course and fewer symptoms, said Dr. Mathai Mammen, Janssen’s global head of research and development. From one month after the shot, all hospitalizations and deaths occurred in the placebo group.

How it works

The J&J vaccine is what is known as a non-replicating viral vector vaccine, using a common cold virus called adenovirus 26. Scientists made this vaccine by taking a small amount of genetic material that codes for a piece of the novel coronavirus and integrating it with a weakened version of adenovirus 26. J&J scientists altered this adenovirus so it can enter cells, but it cannot replicate and make people sick.

AstraZeneca uses a similar platform, but its adenovirus comes from a chimpanzee. The adenovirus carries the genetic material from the coronavirus into human cells, tricking them into making pieces of the coronavirus spike protein — the part it uses to attach to cells. The immune system then reacts against these pieces of the coronavirus.

“So you’re not being infected with the virus that can give you Covid-19 when you get this vaccine. It just has some of the harmless Covid virus proteins on its surface,” explained Dr. William Schaffner, an internist and infectious disease specialist with Vanderbilt University’s Department of Health Policy. “So essentially it’s a sheep in wolf’s clothing, and when your immune system sees it, it responds to it and creates protection against it and in the future, against the real virus that causes Covid-19.”

The technology used in the Covid-19 vaccine has worked with the Ebola vaccine by Janssen.

How is it different from the other Covid-19 vaccines?

Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the Moderna, Pfizer and J&J Covid-19 vaccines all take a similar approach, but there is a small difference with the J&J approach.

“In the case of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine you’re just giving the gene in a lipid nanoparticle or a fat droplet,” Offit said. “In the case of J&J you’re giving the gene in a virus that can’t reproduce itself.”

The J&J vaccine is the only Covid-19 vaccine so far to be given in a single dose. Moderna and Pfizer’s use two. Like Moderna’s, it can also be kept at regular refrigerated temperatures and does not need a deep freeze like Pfizer’s.

How does a single-dose shot affect the rollout?

A single dose and would be much easier to administer and would mean more people could be vaccinated, as none would need to be set aside to give someone a second shot.

“This advantage goes up in neon,” said Schaffner who believes adding a vaccine like this would “really accelerate” vaccination efforts in the US and around the world.

“If it’s a single-dose vaccine, then a billion vaccine doses would translate into a billion people vaccinated,” said Dr. Dan Barouch of Harvard Medical School, who helped develop Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine candidate on CNN’s Coronavirus Fact vs. Fiction podcast.

The cold-chain advantage

J&J’s other advantage is that it can be stored at regular refrigerator temperatures, unlike the Pfizer vaccine, which needs special deep freezers. The vaccine is stable for up to three months at 36 degrees F to 46 degrees F, the company said. That means health care facilities would not have to buy extra equipment to safely store the vaccine.

“If they’re successful, these vaccines would especially be popular in the developing world, because they would be easy to store and administer,” said Dr. Rafi Ahmed, the director of the Vaccine Center at Emory University.

The vaccines would also be popular in rural communities in the US and regular doctor’s offices that may not have access or the budget to afford specialized equipment.

“In other words, we could bring the vaccine to the people,” Schaffner said, “rather than bringing the people to the vaccine.”

What happens next?

The company will request what’s known as an emergency use authorization, or an EUA, from the FDA in early February. The data will get a close look from the FDA and advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While the FDA is reviewing the data, it schedules a public meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. The committee is made up of independent science and public health experts who will discuss the J&J data and make a recommendation to the agency.

After the meeting, FDA staff members consider the committee input along with the agency’s evaluation of the company’s data and will make a decision about whether the vaccine should by authorized.

Shortly after an EUA, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, also known as ACIP, goes through the data, too.

Once the CDC committee has made a recommendation and it has been approved by the CDC director, the company plans to ship the vaccines immediately and it can go into arms right away.

How long does the authorization process take?

The process for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine should be about the same as it was for the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, according Offit, who is a member of the FDA’s VRBPAC.

With the Pfizer vaccine, it took a little over three weeks from the time the company submitted its data to an EUA. With the Moderna vaccine, it took a little more than two weeks.

If the vaccine is authorized for emergency use, “our plan is to have supply immediately upon launch,” Mammen said.

How many doses are there?

The US has ordered 100 million doses and the company has been manufacturing it while it has been testing the vaccine. Typically, companies wait to make the vaccine after its been approved, but that changed during the pandemic. Johnson & Johnson says it can meet its 100 million dose commitment by June.

Dr. Mammen’s mission is to work with the best research and development professionals in the world to make meaningful medicines that impact the lives of patients, their families and communities.

Prior to joining Janssen in June 2017, Dr. Mammen was Senior Vice President at Merck Research Laboratories, responsible for research in the areas of Cardiovascular, Metabolic and Renal Diseases, Oncology/Immuno-Oncology and Immunology. Jointly with his team, he initiated numerous new programs and progressed eight into early clinical development. He also nucleated a new discovery site in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Prior to Merck, Dr. Mammen led R&D at Theravance, a company he co-founded in 1997 based on his work at Harvard University. Under his leadership, the Theravance team of 200 scientists nominated 31 development candidates in 17 years, created three approved products (Breo®, Anoro®, Vibativ®), two additional assets that have successfully completed Phase 3 studies and a pipeline containing 11 further development-stage compounds in 2016. In 2014, he and the Theravance Leadership Team separated Theravance into two publicly traded companies: Innoviva (INVA) and Theravance Biopharma (TBPH).

Dr. Mammen has more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and patents and serves on various boards and advisory committees. He received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts Institute of Technology (HST program) and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry, working with George Whitesides. He received his BSc in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

(Courtesy: CNN’s Amanda Sealy, Jacqueline Howard and Maggie Fox)

Dr. Suresh Reddy Runs For Office As Trustee of Oak Brook, IL

February 3, 2021February 11, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile 0

“With the objective of giving back to the community, utilizing my talents, skills and experiences for the greater good of the community, which has always been my passion, I have decided to run for public office: to be a Trustee of my hometown, Oak Brook, a suburb in the state of Illinois,” Dr. Suresh Reddy, Immediate Past President of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) announced here today.

Declaring that “My nomination for Trustee has just been confirmed,” Dr. Reddy added, “I am among the six candidates running to be Trustees for the three openings that are being contested on April 6th, when the voters in the city will go to polls.”

Having a population of nearly 10,000 people, the city of Oak Brook is located 15 miles west of the Chicago Loop and is served by a network of major federal, state, and county roads including the Tri-State Tollway system, the East-West Tollway and the Eisenhower Expressway. One of the affluent communities in the nation, Oakbrook’s adjacent neighbors include the communities of Villa Park, Elmhurst, Lombard, Oakbrook Terrace, Westchester, Westmont, Clarendon Hills, Downers Grove, and Hinsdale.

Dr. Reddy comes with immense experiences and proven leadership. Dr. Reddy grew up in the suburbs of Hyderabad in Southern India. A financial conservator, Dr. Reddy, always had a passion for “uniting and bringing people together.”
Recalling his childhood, the dynamic leader says, “It all started during my childhood with bringing neighborhood kids together to play “gully cricket” and also bringing people together in college to organize events, demonstrations, and educational tours. Bringing opposing parties to the table for resolving issues has always been my strong strength since my schooling days.”

Not being satisfied with his achievements, Dr. Reddy says, “I always had a strong passion for bringing a positive outlook and giving back to the community. I got involved in several alumni activities and have facilitated to raise funds to build a million dollar alumni educational center for my Alma Mater.”

Dr. Reddy completed his advanced medical training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School and has stayed on Harvard Faculty for more than a decade where he had also served as Chief of Interventional Neuroradiology.

Subsequently, Dr. Reddy and family moved to Chicago which has now become his home. “Now that I call Oak Brook my home, I would like to contribute and serve my community by participating in public service,” says Dr. Reddy.

What motivates him to take on yet another challenging role for the betterment of the community? “My mantra is: If you don’t lead, someone else will lead you. If you don’t pick the right leader, the wrong leader will pick you, and as my good friend US Congressman Raja Says, and if you are not on the table, you will be on the menu
” says Dr. Reddy.

Leading an organization that represents more than 100,000 physicians and Fellows of Indian Origin in the US, being their voice and providing a forum to its members to collectively work together to meet their diverse needs, has been a major challenge. Dr. Suresh Reddy, as the president of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), has been right on task and has devoted the past one year leading AAPI to stability and greater heights. (At the conclusion of his year long term in July 2020, Dr. Reddy fulfilled the promise of working in unison with other arms of AAPI and long term planning and financial stability, which was not an easy feat with the ongoing pandemic.)

He has devoted a greater part of his life to numerous initiates within the United States, in addition to serving his people back in India,. As part of his community service, Dr. Reddy has facilitated and organized numerous health camps and workshops, with special emphasis on CPR training, obesity prevention in conjunction with Chicago Medical Society. During the Covid Pandemic, Dr. Reddy facilitated more than a hundred webinars and health awareness events. He facilitated honoring of more than 10,000 nurses who work selflessly in the line of duty against Covid in over 100 hospitals in over 40 states including Alaska. He led a campaign donating blankets to the needy during the last winter and would like to do the same this winter.

Under Dr. Reddy’s leadership, AAPI has been actively involved in community awareness programs like Obesity prevention, sharing medical knowledge at the Global Health Summit, team building activities such as the Share a Blanket program, medical education programs such as CPR training, social networking programs including 3 trips to the continent of Antarctica, morale building programs like mentoring a future medical student, and India heritage programs like Independence Day celebrations.

His foresight and leadership was appreciated as AAPI became the first major organization to call for ‘universal masking’. AAPI provided free masks to thousands of health care workers. AAPI has also stood against racial discrimination. “We are proud to say that for all our Doctors ‘all lives matter,’” he added.

Present Mayor of Oak Brook Dr. Gopal Lalmalani and Trustee Mr. Moin Saiyed of Oak Brook have been strongly supporting Dr. Reddy. His wife Leela, who was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina has a Master’s Degree in Health Management and Policy. Previously, she was a Director of Network Health Boston, a HMO Health Plan in Boston prior to moving to Chicago. Their son, Rohun is currently doing his JD/MBA at Kellogg School of Management /Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University.

Committing himself to ensure and work tirelessly to keep Oak Brook a strong village, living up to its name as a model village around the nation, Dr. Reddy says, “We would like to continue and strengthen many programs and services the city offers to all sections of the people. More than ever, Fiscal conservatism and wise spending, has become the most important attribute for a financially secure future. Hence I request you to give me a chance to perform my public service with utmost integrity and dignity to the office.”

Dr. Reddy is urging the residents of Oak Brook to sign up for“Mail in ballot”. Given the Covid situation and keeping everyone’s safety in mind, “mail in ballot” is the right approach.

If you are a registered voter, please apply online for the mail in ballot at: https://www.dupageco.org/Election/VoteByMail/ Once you apply, please text me or email me, so that I can make sure you get your “mail in ballot”. Email: reddyforoakbrook@gmail.com

Vice President Kamala Harris Says She’ll Ensure a Pathway for Community

January 29, 2021February 3, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

Three women tried unsuccessfully to break the glass ceiling to reach the top positions of the US, one as president and two as vice presidents, and finally Kamala Harris has managed to smash it.

Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016 but was defeated by Donald Trump on the basis of the Electoral College votes although she got more popular votes than him.

Geraldine Ferraro was the Democrat Party vice presidential candidate in 1984 running with Walter Mondale, the presidential candidate. They ran against a very popular president, Ronald Reagan, and his Vice President George H.W. Bush, who defeated them in a landslide.

Republican Sara Palin, considered a political lightweight, ran for vice president in 2008 with the presidential candidate John McCain. They lost to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Palin was the governor of Alaska state with no experience in national politics or international affairs and her campaign was punctuated by gaffes.

There have been other women running for president and vice president but they were from smaller parties with no chance of election.

Harris was not the only vice president candidate of Indian origin in the 2020 election. Sunil Freeman, whose mother is an immigrant from India, ran for vice president on the ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation with presidential candidate Gloria La Riva. They received 84,905 votes or 0.01 per cent.

The many identities of the first woman vice-president

In a video posted to her social media she shares the news with President-elect Joe Biden: “We did it, we did it Joe. You’re going to be the next president of the United States!”

Her words are about him but the history of the moment is hers.

Just over a year ago, as the senator from California hoping to win the Democratic nomination for presidency, she launched a potent attack on Joe Biden over race during a debate. Many thought it inflicted a serious blow on his ambitions. But by the end of the year her campaign was dead and it was Mr Biden who returned the 56-year-old to the national spotlight by putting her on his ticket.

“It is a big reversal of fortune for Kamala Harris,” says Gil Duran, a communications director for Ms Harris in 2013 and who has critiqued her run for the presidential nomination.

“Many people didn’t think she had the discipline and focus to ascend to a position in the White House so quickly… although people knew she had ambition and star potential. It was always clear that she had the raw talent.”

What she has demonstrated from the moment she took the national stage with her pitch for the presidency – is grit.

(Picture: ABC News)

Sonia Aggarwal Named To Be Biden’s Climate Policy Adviser

January 18, 2021 Staff ReporterEnvironment, Profile, Women 0

Sonia Aggarwal, an energy policy expert has been named by President-elect Joe Biden as the senior advisor for climate policy and innovation, the latest of several key Indian American nominees for his administration.

She led America’s Power Plan, bringing together 200 electricity policy experts, at Energy Innovation, of which she was a co-founder and Vice President, according to the biography from Biden’s transition team.

Aggarwal also directed the team that developed the Energy Policy Simulator to analyse the environmental, economic, and public health impacts of climate and energy policies

Earlier, she managed global research at ClimateWorks Foundation, “where she worked on the McKinsey carbon abatement cost curves and led research for the American Energy Innovation Council”, the biography said. Born and raised in Ohio, Aggarwal has a masters at Stanford University in civil engineering.

Indian Americans named to important positions in the administration of Biden, who will take over as President, and Kamala Harris, as Vice President next Wednesday, include Neera Tanden, who will be the director of the Office of Management and Budget with cabinet rank, and Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, both of whom will have to be confirmed in their positions by the Senate, and Vedant Patel, to be his assistant press secretary, Vinay Reddy to be the director of speechwriting and Gautam Raghavan, to be the deputy director of the Office of Presidential Personnel.

Among others are: Atul Gawande and Celine Gounder, members of the COVID-19 task force; Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council; Sabrina Singh, deputy press secretary for Harris; Mala Adiga, policy director for Jill Biden, who will become the First Lady, and Maju Varghese, executive director of their inauguration — the swearing-in ceremony and the festivities around it.

At the powerful National Security Council, the nominees are Tarun Chhabra, senior director for technology and national security; Sumona Guha, senior director for South Asia, and Shanthi Kalathil, coordinator for Democracy and Human Rights.

A media strategist, Garima Verma, has been named the digital director for Jill Biden, who will become the First Lady next week. Making the announcement about Verma and other additions to her staff, President-elect Joe Biden’ wife Jill Biden said, “Together, we will work to open the White House in new, inclusive and innovative ways, reflecting more fully the distinct beauty of all our communities, cultures and traditions.”

On Jill Biden’s staff, Verma will be joining Mala Adiga who was appointed the policy director. The president’s spouse has a large staff and an office because of the extensive social life and work on chosen public causes.

One of Jill Biden’s causes is helping military service members, their families and ex-service members. That program will be run through a relaunched Joining Forces, a nationwide effort that had been started by her and former First Lady Michelle Obama.

William Burns, Architect Of India-US Nuclear Deal Is Named CIA Chief

January 18, 2021February 5, 2021 Staff ReporterIndia, Nation, Nation USA, Profile 0

US President-elect Joe Biden on Monday named William Burns, who guided the nuclear deal between India and the US but is a strong critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to be the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

A former Deputy Secretary of State and a senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council, and now the President of the think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, he emphasised the importance of relations with India while criticising Modi over Kashmir and the Citizenship Amendment Act.

But he has also acknowledged that “outsiders” cannot resolve these issues.

“I continue to believe strongly in the wisdom of the strategic investment that America and India have made in each other’s success over the past two decades,” Burns wrote last year in an article in The Atlantic magazine.

Recalling his role in bringing about the landmark agreement, he wrote: “I was the diplomat charged with completing the US-India civil-nuclear dealing the summer and fall of 2008.”

The agreement reached while Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister and George W. Bush the US President enables the two countries to cooperate on civilian nuclear projects and India to have broader access to nuclear technology and materials.

Burns recalled strong-arming European allies to go along with the exemption for India from the Nuclear Supplier Group to enable it to get access to nuclear material and equipment.

“This was about power, and we were exercising it – hardly endearing ourselves to groggy (European) partners, but impressing our Indian counterparts with the strength of America’s commitment to get this done,” he wrote.

As the US grapples with the rise of China and its hostility to Washington’s treaty allies in Asia, Burns will have to balance his nation’s strategic priorities with his personal attitude to Modi and India that he expressed as the head of a liberal think tank.

The announcement of the appointment by Biden’s transition office mentioned the threat from China.

It said, “Whether it’s cyber attacks emanating from Moscow, the challenge China poses, or the threat we face from terrorists and other non-state actors, he has the experience and skill to marshal efforts across government and around the world to ensure the CIA is positioned to protect the American people.”

Drawing on his experience of working with New Delhi, he wrote in what could be his roadmap for relations between New Delhi and Washington emphasising continuity saying that it was bigger than the ties between President Donald Trump and Modi.

“For India and the US to maximise the return on their investments, we must take a long view, keeping in mind why this strategic bet was made in the first place: our common democratic values, a long-term vision of economic openness, and a growing confidence in each other’s reliability,” he wrote in the Atlantic article published last year around Trump’s visit to India.

He criticised both Trump and Modi saying, “As intolerance and division in both societies erode their democracies, I fear that the leaders may reinforce each other’s worst instincts.”

But Trump will be gone next week and Biden will take over with resets of international and domestic issues.

“A battle for the idea of India is under way, between the tolerant constitutional convictions of its founders and the harsher Hindu majoritarianism that has lurked beneath the surface,” Burns said.

It is “testing India’s democratic guardrails in much the same way that the Trump era is testing America’s” but “either struggle will not be settled by outsiders – but both will shape the nature of Indian-American partnership in the years ahead,” he wrote.

In criticising Modi and the BJP, he listed the revocation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that gave a special status to Kashmir, the CAA that he asserted “discriminates against Muslims seeking refuge in India”, feeding “tensions over disputed religious sites” and “pressures against critical journalists and academics”.

He wrote that Modi like Trump is “skilled in the business of political showmanship, with a keen eye for the vulnerabilities of established elites, and for the dark art of stoking nativist fires”.

Burns was also executive secretary of the State Department and special assistant to then Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, and minister-counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Moscow. (IANS)

(Picture Courtesy: The New Indian Express)

Vanita Gupta Named By Bident As Associate Attorney General

January 18, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

President-elect Joe Biden has nominated notable Indian-American civil rights attorney, Vanita Gupta, as Associate Attorney General, the third highest ranking position at the Department of Justice (DOJ).

“As associate attorney general, the number three job at the department, I nominate Vanita Gupta. A woman I’ve known for some time. One of the most respected civil rights lawyers in America,” said Biden. “The proud daughter of immigrants from India, I’m grateful that Vanita is leaving her current job leading one of the premier civil rights organizations in the world as she answers the call to serve once again to ensure our justice system is even more fair and equitable,” the President-elect said in his announcement address.

One of the best-known and most respected civil rights attorneys in America, Gupta served as acting assistant attorney general for the civil rights division at the Justice Department under President Obama. She is currently the president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

“I am humbled and honored to return to the Department of Justice and to once again work alongside the women and men who defend our Constitution and enforce our federal laws,” Gupta said. “My parents were proud immigrants from India; who taught me early on the values that led me to civil rights work and public service.”

Vice-President elect Harris in her speech highlighted the damage that has been done to the Justice Department and the country’s long-overdue reckoning on racial injustice, once again condemning the storming of the US Capitol and Trump’s role in inciting the violence.

Gupta had served as the principal deputy assistant attorney general and head of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department in former President Barack Obama’s administration when Biden was the Vice President.

Vanita Gupta, has recalled her experience of racial bigotry as a four-year-old while she pledged her commitment to civil rights and justice reform. Speaking on Thursday after Biden introduced her as “one of the most respected civil rights lawyers in America”, Gupta spoke of her parents as “proud immigrants from India”, and the family’s experience of bias, “an early memorybut one that is seared in my mind”.

“One day, I was sitting in a McDonald’s restaurant with my sister, mother, and grandmother. As we ate our meals, a group of skinheads at the next table began shouting ethnic slurs and throwing food at us until we had to leave the restaurant,” she said. “That feeling never left me of what it means to be made to feel unsafe because of who you are,” said Gupta, who went on to a brilliant career as a fighter for civil rights.

She gained fame when straight out of law school she won the release of 38 people, most of them African Americans, who had been wrongly convicted on drug charges in a Texas town by all-White juries. She also got them $6 million on compensation.

She was then working for the Legal Defence Fund of NAACP (National Association of Coloured People). Gupta went on to work as a staff lawyer for the top human rights organisation, the American Civil Liberties Union, where she took on several cases for immigrants and victims of mass arrests.

A landmark case she won was getting a settlement for children held in privately run immigration prisons. She is now the president and CEO of Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 human rights organisations.

Gupta will have to be confirmed by the Senate as associate attorney general, which would be smooth sailing because the Democrats have taken control of the Senate. She is the latest of a series of Indian Americans appointed to important posts by Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

They include Neera Tanden, who will be the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, both of whom will have to be confirmed in their positions by the Senate, and Vedant Patel, to be his assistant press secretary, Vinay Reddy to be the director of speechwriting and Gautam Raghavan, to be the deputy director of the Office of Presidential Personnel.

Indian-American Dr Raj Iyer has also taken over as the first Chief Information Officer of the US Army, after the Pentagon created the position in July 2020. Equivalent in rank to a three-star General, Iyer will supervise an annual budget of USD 16 billion for the US Army’s IT operations.

One of the highest ranking Indian-American civilians in the US Department of Defense, Iyer, who holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering, serves as the principal advisor to the Secretary of the Army and directs representation of the secretary in matters relating to information management/information technology (IT), the Pentagon said in a statement.

Biden on Friday named health policy expert Vidur Sharma as the testing adviser on his Covid-19 Response Team. Sharma, the latest Indian American nominee for a key position in the administration of Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris that takes over next Wednesday, will be joining others dealing with the fight against coronavirus like Surgeon General-nominee Vivek Murthy, and Covid-19 Task Force members Atul Gawande and Celine Gounder.

Sharma, like many Biden nominees, is an old White House hand having served in the administration of former President Barack Obama, when Biden was Vice President. In that stint, he was a health policy adviser on the Domestic Policy Council working on implementing Obama’s signature programme of trying to ensure health insurance for all, known as Obamacare.

Among others are Atul Gawande and Celine Gounder to the Covid-19 task force, Mala Adiga to be the policy director for Jill Biden, who will become the First Lady, and Maju Varghese to be the executive director of their inauguration – the swearing-in ceremony and the festivities around it. Appointment of Gupta with a strong civil rights records could reassure them about Biden’s commitment to the cause.

(Picture Courtesy: OneIndia)

Indian AmericanWins Prestigious Infosys Prize In Mathematical Sciences

January 11, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Profile 0

Sourav Chatterjee, a world-renowned mathematician, and a professor of mathematics and statistics at Stanford University’s School of Humanities and Sciences, has been awarded a prestigious mathematics prize – Infosys Prize in Mathematical Sciences.

Now for his contribution to mathematics, the Infosys Science Foundation, awarded Chatterjee the prestigious Infosys Prize in Mathematical Sciences, which is a $100,000 reward.

The award aims to recognize outstanding researchers and scientists around the world. Through the award, the Foundation aims to encourage the spread of science in India, particularly among young people.

“I’m very honored and humbled to receive this prize,” said Chatterjee, who first came to Stanford as a doctoral student in 2002 after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata. “It means a lot to be recognized by the group of esteemed mathematicians assembled by The Infosys Science Foundation, and I feel encouraged to continue pushing ahead with my research.”

Deeply embedded in probability and statistics, Chatterjee’s work has had significant impacts not only in mathematics but also broadly in physics, technology and other fields. Across his many papers, Chatterjee has devised novel mathematical approaches for scientists to apply in their own research.

“One of the big guiding practices in my work has been making mathematical tools other people can use,” Chatterjee said.

Topics that have benefitted from his mathematical insights include occurrences of rare events, the dynamics of social as well as technological networks, the behavior of magnets and efforts to further solidify a mathematical basis for quantum mechanics.

Chatterjee enjoys the challenge of breaking down a problem to its tiniest form and figuring out a fresh perspective. Reflecting both this range of applications and the helpfulness of Chatterjee’s work, the jury of the Infosys Science Foundation, composed of academics from around the world, described Chatterjee as “one of the most versatile probabilists of his generation” and praised his “formidable problem-solving powers.”

Chatterjee completed his Bachelor and Master of Statistics from Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Later he moved to Standford to complete his Ph.D in 2005, where he worked under the supervision of PersiDiaconis, another renowned mathematician.

Chatterjee later joined University of California, Berkeley, as a Visiting Assistant Professor, then received a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in 2006.

(Picture Courtesy: Stanford News)

Sabrina Singh Named White House Deputy Press Secretary

January 11, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile 0

Indian American Sabrina Singh, a longtime aide to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, has been named White House Deputy Press Secretary in the incoming administration, according to a statement released Jan. 8 by the Biden-Harris transition team.

Singh was earlier the senior spokesperson for the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign and the national press secretary for Cory Booker’s presidential campaign.

In roles prior to that, she served as deputy communications director for the Democratic National Committee; spokesperson for American Bridge’s Trump War Room; and regional communications director on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She has also worked at SKDKnickerbocker, served as communications director for Rep. Jan Schakowsky and worked on various Democratic committees.

In the weeks since the U.S. election results have been announced, several Indian Americans have been appointed to important posts by President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

They include NeeraTanden, who will be the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, both of whom will have to be confirmed to their positions by the Senate. Vedant Patel has been tapped to serve as Biden’s assistant press secretary, Vinay Reddy to serve as the director of speechwriting and GautamRaghavan to be the deputy director of the Office of Presidential Personnel.

Others include AtulGawande and Celine Gounder to the Covid-19 task force, Mala Adiga as the policy director for Jill Biden, who will become the First Lady, and Maju Varghese as the executive director of their inauguration – the swearing-in ceremony and the festivities around it.

(Picture Courtesy: Punjab News)

Dr. SudhakarJonnalagadda ReceivesPravasiBharatiyaSamman Award

January 11, 2021January 18, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Profile 0

Dr. SudhakarJonnalagadda, President of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), was conferred The PravasiBharatiyaSamman Award (PBSA) during the 16^th edition of the annual PravasiBharatiya Divas (PBD) Convention, held virtually on January 9^th, 2021. The PravasiBharatiyaSamman Awards were conferred by the Hon’ble President at the PBD Convention in the valedictory session of the PravasiBharatiya Divas celebrations.

The PravasiBharatiyaSamman Award (PBSA) is the highest honor conferred on Non-Resident Indians, Persons of Indian Origin or an organization/institution established and run by the Non-Resident Indians or Persons of Indian Origin in recognition of their outstanding achievements both in India and abroad.

Dr. Jonnalagadda was chosen for the prestigious award by the government of India in the field of Medicine and for his great leadership of AAPI, the largest ethnic medical organization in the US, especially during the Pandemic.

Dr. Jonnalagadda, said, “I wanted to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to the government of India for selecting me for the prestigious award. In recognizing me, the government has recognized all the medical professionals who have been in the forefront fighting Covid, including those who have laid their lives at the services of treating patients infected with the deadly virus. This award will strengthen the medical fraternity to recommit our efforts, skills and talents for the greater good of humanity. Congratulations to all of my co-awardees.”

Dr. SudhakarJonnalagadda assumed office as the 37^th President of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) on Saturday, July 11, 2020, and committed himself to “make AAPI stronger, more vibrant, united, transparent, politically engaged, ensuring active participation of young physicians, increasing membership, and enabling that AAPI’s voice is heard in the corridors of power” .

AAPI is the largest Medical Organization in the United States, representing the interests of the over 100,000 physicians and Fellows of Indian origin in the United States, serving the interests of the Indian American physicians in the US and in many ways contributing to the shaping of the healthcare delivery in the US for the past 39 years. “AAPI must be responsive to its members, supportive of the leadership and a true advocate for our mission,” he said.

Dr. Jonnalagadda was born in a family of physicians. His father was a Professor at a medical college in India and his mother was a teacher. He and his siblings aspired to be physicians and dedicate their lives for the greater good of humanity. “I am committed to serving the community and help the needy. That gives me the greatest satisfaction in life,” he said. Ambitious and wanting to achieve greater things in life, Dr. Jonnalagadda has numerous achievements in life. He currently serves as the President of the Medical Staff at the Hospital. And now, “being elected as the President of AAPI is greatest achievement of my life,”

As the President of AAPI, the dynamic physician from the state of Andhra Pradesh, wants to “develop a committee to work with children of AAPI members who are interested in medical school, to educate on choosing a school and gaining acceptance; Develop a committee to work with medical residents who are potential AAPI members, to educate on contract negotiation, patient communication, and practice management; Develop a committee to work with AAPI medical students, and to provide proctorship to improve their selection of medical residencies.”

A Board-Certified Gastroenterologist/Transplant Hepatologist, working in Douglas, GA, Dr. Jonnalagadda is a former Assistant Professor at the Medical College of Georgia. He was the President of Coffee Regional Medical Staff 2018, and had served as the Director of Medical Association of Georgia Board from 2016 onwards. He had served as the President of Georgia Association of Physicians of Indian Heritage (GAPI) 2007-2008, and was the past chair of Board of trustees, GAPI. He was the chairman of the Medical Association of Georgia, IMG cection, and was a Graduate, Georgia Physicians Leadership Academy (advocacy training).

His vision for AAPI is to increase the awareness of APPI globally and help its voice heard in the corridors of power. “I would like to see us lobby the US Congress and create an AAPI PAC and advocate for an increase in the number of available residency positions and green cards to Indian American Physicians so as to help alleviate the shortage of Doctors in the US.”

Winning 2 Seats in Georgia Run Off, Democrats to take Control of US Senate

January 7, 2021January 11, 2021 Staff ReporterNation USA, Profile 0

Democrats won control of the US Senate after Jon Ossoff joined his Georgia colleague Raphael Warnock in beating Republican incumbents in run-off elections, giving incoming president Joe Biden control of both houses of Congress.
Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have defeated Georgia’s two incumbent Republican U.S. senators in the state’s runoff elections, the Associated Press said Wednesday, in a development that gives their party effective control of the Senate.
Ossoff and Warnock were projected the winners over Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler by the AP following campaigns that drew massive spending and worldwide attention because the runoffs were set to determine the balance of power in Washington. The AP called the race for Warnock over Loeffler first, at about 2 a.m. Eastern, then followed with the call for Ossoff over Perdue on Wednesday afternoon.
Republicans controlled 50 seats in the Senate following November’s elections and would have remained the majority party in the 100-seat chamber with just one win in Georgia. But instead Democrats picked up two seats and now are set to run the Senate.
The pair of Democratic wins in Georgia mean a 50-50 split in the Senate, effectively giving Democrats control of the chamber since Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be able to cast tie-breaking votes.
Ossoff, at 33, will be the youngest member of the Senate when he is sworn into office. Ossoff, a CEO of a London-based investigative documentary company, entered the national political scene four years ago when he narrowly lost a special election in Georgia 6th Congressional District in a race that drew national attention, making it the most expensive House election at the time. Perdue, 71, was first elected to the senate in 2014. Prior to being elected to Congress, Perdue was a businessman who worked for companies like Reebok, PillowTex, a North Carolina textile company and Dollar General.
Warnock made history with his election win, becoming the first Black Democrat elected as a U.S. senator from a state in the South and only the 11th Black senator in the history of the nation. He becomes the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race in Georgia in 20 years.
“To everyone out there struggling today, whether you voted for me or not, know this,” Warnock said as he declared victory in a video from his home. “I hear you, I see you, and every day I’m in the United States Senate, I will fight for you. I will fight for your family.”
President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration and the Democratic-run House of Representatives now won’t face the same checks on their policy priorities that they would have faced with a Republican-controlled Senate, though analysts have said the slim Democratic majority in the chamber could mean more power for moderate senators from either party.

Kader Sakkaria is a Strong Contender for IPSD District 204 School Board

December 31, 2020January 8, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Profile 0

Naperville, IL, Date 12/25/2021: Kader Sakkaria is running for IPSD District 204 School Board, scheduled to be held on April 6th, 2021. He is an eminent resident of Naperville for over 25 years. He is husband of substitute teacher in district 204 and have 3 kids with one currently a freshman in WVHS. He is widely known for his passion and rich practical corporate and higher education experience, which he will leverage to create a vision for school children’s bright futures.
Kader Sakkaria said that the fast-changing career opportunities, changing educational landscape, emerging technologies, Covid-19 Pandemic impact on mental health, Attention to Special Needs, etc. require fresh perspectives and innovative intervention strategies in order to ensure that school education continues to be in accordance with the demands of the contemporary challenges. The priorities of Kader Sakkaria, therefore, include helping the District 204 School Board to adapt, grow, and thrive in the domain of education in general and school education in particular.
“Ensuring safe and bullying-free environment for students, addressing class size and class crowding, promoting smart funding and zoning decisions, helping District 204 build technology infrastructure for high-quality learning, both in the classroom and online, collaborating with multiple organizations for Covid-19 vaccination and student / teacher health and safety, and empowering students with the tools for success in the rapidly- changing scenario would be the steps in the right directions”, stated Kader Sakkaria, with a sense of conviction.
Kader Sakkaria serves as the Chief Digital and Technology Officer at RNL, which helps Universities encourage more students to enroll. Prior to joining RNL, he held senior positions in a number of eminent organizations during the last over two-and-a-half decades.

Several NRIs to Hold Key Positions Under Biden- Harris Administration

December 31, 2020January 8, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Profile 0

US President-elect Joe Biden has appointed Vedant Patel, a former communications aide to House of Representatives member Pramila Jayapal, as his assistant press secretary on Friday last week. Already, at least eight Indian Americans have snagged headline grabbing appointments in the incoming government: Dr. Vivek Murthy is US Surgeon General nominee, Atul Gawande and Celine Gounder are on the coronavirus task force, Neera Tanden is nominated for Office of Management and Budget lead, Mala Adiga has been chosen as policy director for First Lady Jill Biden.
Maju Varghese will be the executive director of their inauguration – the swearing-in ceremony and the festivities around it. Gautam Raghavan hasd been nominated to be the Deputy Director, Office of Presidential Personnel and Vinay Reddy will be the Director of Speechwriting for the President. President-elect Joe Biden named Bharat Ramamurti to be deputy director of the National Economic Council with an important role in carrying out his campaign promises of banking and consumer reforms. Tanden and Dr. Murthy will have to be confirmed in their positions by the Senate, unlike in the case of Patel and others.
Patel has held a string of communications positions in the Democratic Party domain, most recently as a regional communications director for the campaign of Biden and Kamala Harris, moving up from the Biden primary campaign where he headed up communications for Nevada and western states. He was born in India and grew up California, graduating from the University of California-Riverside.
Patel has also been the western regional press secretary for the Democratic National Committee and communication director for Jayapal and Mike Honda, the California representative who lost to Ro Khanna. Patel’s nomination is a gesture to the left – Jayapal is a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Raghavan serves as Deputy Head of Presidential Appointments on the Biden-Harris Transition. Prior to joining the transition, Raghavan served as Chief of Staff to U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Previously, Raghavan served as an Advisor to the Biden Foundation, and as Vice President of Policy for the Gill Foundation, one of the oldest and largest private foundations dedicated to the cause of LGBTQ equality.
During the Obama-Biden Administration, Raghavan served in the White House as the liaison to the LGBTQ community as well as the Asian American & Pacific Islander community, and in the White House Liaison Office for the U.S. Department of Defense and as Outreach Lead for the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Working Group. A first-generation immigrant, Gautam was born in India, raised in Seattle, and graduated from Stanford University. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his husband and their daughter.
Vinay Reddy, Director of Speechwriting: Vinay Reddy serves as a speechwriter on the Biden-Harris Transition and served as Senior Advisor and Speechwriter for the Biden-Harris Campaign. He previously served as chief speechwriter to Vice President Biden in the second term of the Obama-Biden White House, after which, he worked as Vice President of Strategic Communications at the National Basketball Association. During the Obama-Biden Administration, he also served as senior speechwriter at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, deputy speechwriter for the Obama-Biden reelection campaign, and speechwriter for his home state Senator, Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
Reddy grew up in Dayton, Ohio, the middle of three sons in an immigrant family and is a product of Ohio public schools from kindergarten to Miami University to The Ohio State University College of Law. He currently lives in New York with his wife and their two daughters.
Bharat Ramamurti will be responsible for financial reform and consumer protection on the council, which is the president’s influential advisory body on economic policy. Ramamurti is expected to help steer the Biden administration’s programs to implement several promises in his manifesto of reform, consumer protection and banking.
The latest to be added to the growing number of Indian Americans on the new administration is Aisha Shah. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris announced on December 28th members of the White House Office of Digital Strategy, among them an Indian-American, Aisha Shah.
Shah joins the Office of Digital Strategy as a ‘Partnerships Manager, a role she has played on the Biden-Harris Campaign. Shah currently serves as an Advancement Specialist for the Smithsonian Institution.
Prior to this role, Shah worked as an Assistant Manager on the Corporate Fund of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, supporting the first-ever expansion of a presidential memorial. Shah also served as a Strategic Communications Specialist at Buoy, an integrated marketing firm that specializes in social impact communications, as well as Spitfire Strategies, where she enabled nonprofits to use pop culture as a tool for social change. Born in Kashmir and raised in Louisiana, Shah is a graduate of Davidson College.

“Women Who Win” Awarded ‘Leadership in Women Empowerment Award By Indian Medical Association of New England

December 16, 2020January 8, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Profile, Women 0

Dr. Manju Sheth, Dr. Deepa Jhaveri, and Shaleen Sheth, the pioneers in creating a new movement to empower women with the recent launch of their movement, “Women who win# Dreamcatchers” were awarded the prestigious Leadership in Women Empowerment Award by Indian Medical Association of New England (IMANE) at the annual gala organized virtually on Saturday, December 12^th, 2020.

The platform was honored for “Leadership in Women Empowerment” as the “President’s Award.” Founded in 1978, IMANE is one of the oldest Indian Medical Associations in the United States. It is an organization for medical professionals of Indian origin in the New England area.

“Women who win# Dreamcatchers” is a Global Media Platform sharing dreams, Passions & Life lessons of a Woman’s Journey, Emphasizing women empowerment across all ages, industries, and backgrounds, & bringing women from around the world together daily with inspiring, relatable, and relevant original stories.

The platform has featured as exclusive interviews, skill shares, webinars, podcasts, and more including Business, Policy, Technology, Social Activism, Arts & Lifestyle, Global Recipes, Women’s Health and more with trailblazing contributors across all fields.

“This year with the pandemic and other challenges being faced in the world right now, women who win brings positivity and inspiration, reminding women to continue chasing their dreams and make it a reality,” said Dr. Maju Sheth the visionary women’s leader.

Women Who Win has done outstanding work for global women’s health and wellness through weekly articles and webinars, bringing together providers and patients around the world, and IMANE is excited to have collaborated with them on webinars including an international podiatry panel, and an open-minded conversation on gynecology.

This year, they have brought expertise from renowned specialists in topics such as allergies, nutrition and wellness, pulmonary, dental care during Covid-19 and more. Further, they highlighted the discussion in healthcare policy, including gender gap in healthcare, affordable healthcare, and creating change with leading health reform pioneer Rosemarie Day. They have also brought in the patient’s perspective, sharing women in our community’s powerful journeys with breast and colon cancer.

In her address, Dr. Dhrumil Shah, President of IMANE, said, “The work of a small group of thoughtful and passionate individuals can change the world. I never doubted this sentiment but, there is a difference in believing it and experiencing it first-hand. This year the work of three women in our community, two of them being IMANE (Indian Medical Association leaders] Dr. Manju Sheth, Dr. Deepa Jhaveri, and Shaleen Sheth, have done extraordinary work to empower women globally in these tough times.”

According to Dr. Shah, ‘Women Who Win’ #Dreamcatchers has become a platform full of inspirational stories, life lessons of women’s journeys and insights from topics such as humanitarian, social & entrepreneurial causes.. I am amazed each time their stories come out on how powerful an impact it is making in our global sentiment as they fuel positivity, inclusion, diversity and collaboration. We at IMANE are proud to partner with Women Who Win on the Women’s Health Series webinars, where we bring global experts and speakers on key healthcare related topics. I feel truly proud and honored to see the work of our team reaching the stage beyond my imagination. I would like to thank and congratulate the Women Who Win team for their ongoing success in changing the world one story at a time.”

From the stories of social activists fighting to end gender-based violence and the life of a female pilot flying planes for humanity, to a woman building 2200 schools for girls in remote areas, trailblazing millennials, and women overcoming adversities and challenges of daily life, the platform has something for everyone.

Dr. Manju Sheth is a physician by profession, having a passion for media and commitment to serve the larger humanity, with special focus on women’s empowerment. She is a Board Certified Internist, currently serving patients at Beth Israel Lahey Hospital.in the Boston Region in Massachusetts.

Dr. Sheth wears many hats to her credit. A multi-tasker and with full of energy, Dr. Sheth says, “If you want to do something in life then you will find a way.” It has not been easy to be “a physician, mother, media personality, and be involved in our vibrant New England community and the media world, but each of my involvements is truly important to me, and I give my full heart and energy to each of them. I always remind myself, that anything worth having has to be worked for.”

Dr. Sheth has been a big advocate for empowerment of women and she has invested her time, energy and efforts all her life more than any other cause. “I’ve always had a passion for women empowerment, and I bring that to all the projects and opportunities I pursue,” she says. She has served on the board of ATASK (Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence) and as the Chairperson of Saheli, a prestigious Boston based organization, whose mission is to empower South Asian women to lead safe and healthy lives.

Having served on spreading awareness on women’s rights, Dr. Sheth says, “My biggest focus right now is the new Women who win # Dreamcatchers platform where we showcase dreams, passions & life lessons of a women’s journey on our website, womenwhowin100.com and on multiple social media platforms. And this initiative keeps me stay motivated each and every day.”

To join a global group of women around the world to share stories and discuss prominent and relevant women’s topics, join their vibrant community on Facebook ,Instagram,Linkedin & website wwwwomenwhowin100.

TiE Global Awards Bill Gates With Lifetime Achievement Award

December 16, 2020January 8, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Profile, Technology 0

Technologist, business leader, and philanthropist Bill Gates was presented with the Lifetime Achievement First Generation Entrepreneur Award at the inaugural TiE Global Awards held during the TiE Global Summit (TGS) 2020 on Friday. The award was presented by TGS chair Sridhar Pinnapureddy.

The award celebrates Gates’ body of work that laid the foundation for today’s entrepreneurs and technology innovators, and his philanthropic efforts towards making the world a better place for those often overlooked by society.

TiE Global this year honored 12 entrepreneurs and executives from across the world and thanked Bill Gates and Bill Marriott for accepting Honorary Lifetime Achievement awards.

“Entrepreneurship has no boundaries nor a language. We foster and support entrepreneurs and visionaries who build enterprises to solve a billion people’s problems or a dreamer in high school wanting to increase human productivity,” said Praveen Tailam, a member of the Board of Trustee of TiE Global and former [resident TiE Boston. “TiE has brought the corporates to investors to universities to accelerators and the entire startup ecosystem together. TiE Global Entrepreneurship Awards is an appreciation of these individuals from different parts of the world.”

“Mr. Gates’ contributions are ginormous and invaluable, to list them out will be impossible. But the greatest, we at TiE feel is, that his work in computing has empowered anyone who uses a PC or any devices. His dream of the era of home computing when they were just used by big corporates, governments led to this day. Today, we have a mini-computer in the form of smartphones in our pockets. His work has impacted the way the world works,” said Mahavir Sharma, TiE Global chair.

Receiving the award virtually during TiE Global Summit, he said it was honor to receive this prestigious award from TiE. In his remarks on the occasion, he said innovation is the key to solve the world’s toughest challenges, whether it is stopping a pandemic, avoiding a climate disaster or just raising human productivity.

“But as Paul Allen and I experienced with Microsoft, innovators can’t make it on their own. They need supporters and partners to make sure that their best ideas make it from the lab to the marketplace. For over 27 years, TiE has been doing just that. You support great entrepreneurs around the world and in some of the most important fields in technology today. Your work is essential in fostering innovation and creating the better world we all want,” said Gates.

Co-founder of Microsoft Corporation, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates, was chosen for the award by a jury of business leaders, chaired by N.R. Narayana Murthy, founder, Infosys Technologies. Other members of the jury include professor Jagdish Sheth; Charles H. Kellstadt, professor of business, Emory University; and Gururaj Deshpande, president, and chairman, Sparta Group; as well as an entrepreneur and author Ping Fu, co-founder and board director, Geomagic. The TiE Global Awards was chaired by Kali Gadiraju, board member, TiE Global.As a first generation entrepreneur, Bill Gates has created a remarkable impact not only on the global economy but also has become an inspiration to many many entrepreneurs through generations, said Mahavir Sharma, TiE Global Chair.

Bill Gates is a visionary entrepreneur who has overcome various challenges and failures to create a new world, and he has leveraged success to tackle health and poverty issues worldwide which are overlooked by society, said Sridhar Pinnapureddy, TGS2020 Chair.

The lifetime achievement service award was posthumously conferred on late F.C. Kohli, father of Indian IT Industry and the lifetime achievement family business transformation on Bill Marriott of Marriott International.

Kohli was the founder and first CEO of Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest software services company. He died recently. His wife received the award and thanked TiE for choosing him for the award. TiE also presented 10 awards under various categories. Six outstanding entrepreneurs and seven ecosystem players were recognized.

The Singapore government was given the award for the best government agency supporting startup ecosystem. Best corporate supporting entrepreneurship went to Google/Alphabet for start-ups. Stanford University was recognised as the best university promoting entrepreneurship.

Best accelerator award was conferred on Y Combinator, best performing global VC Fund went to Sequoia Capital, and the most active angel network in the world award went to Tech Coast Angels.

Bootstrapped to Billions award has gone to Ben Chestnut and rapid listing award to VIR Biotechnology, lightening unicorn award to Indigo Agriculture and most innovative startup to Data Robot.

In its inaugural TiE Global Entrepreneurship Awards program, TiE found Bill Gates as the most deserving person on earth, based on their extensive research under the guidance of renowned management professors, to receive Lifetime Achievement Award for a first generation entrepreneur who created a global scale organization which outlives the entrepreneur and is an inspiration to generations, TiE Global said in a statement.

Biden, Harris Named TIME’s 2020 ‘Person Of The Year’

December 16, 2020January 8, 2021 Staff ReporterNation USA, Profile, Women 0

TIME magazine has named Joe Biden and Kamala Harris 2020’s Person of the Year. The two made history this year when they beat Donald Trump in a bitter election that put him in a small club of presidents who served only one term. Harris on that day became the country’s first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president-elect.

“For changing the American story, for showing that the forces of empathy are greater than the furies of division, for sharing a vision of healing in a grieving world, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are TIME’s 2020 Person of the Year,” wrote Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan was named Businessperson of the Year. The video chat service spiked in popularity amid a health crisis that forced people to work and learn from home. In the category of Guardians of the Year, Time named activists Assa Traoré, Porche Bennett-Bey and racial-justice organizers; frontline health workers fighting the pandemic; and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Time magazine’s tradition of singling out an especially influential person started in 1927, launching as Man of the Year. The name was later changed to Person of the Year, which is bestowed on an individual, a group, a movement or an idea that had the most influence in the past year. In 2006, Time named “You” as Person of the Year to recognize the millions of people who contribute to content on the internet. Not everyone who made the cut wielded positive influence. Adolf Hitler, for example, was Man of the Year in 1938. In 2019, Time picked young climate activist, Greta Thunberg.

The shortlist unveiled earlier last weekwas a clear reflection of the year’s most dramatic events. Biden, Trump, Frontline Health Care Workers and Dr. Fauci and the Movement for Racial Justice were all major characters in a tumultuous year that included a deadly pandemic, social unrest over racial injustices and a contentious election.

NBA star LeBron James was named Athlete of the Year and Korean pop group BTS was Entertainer of the Year, both of which were revealed on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday morning. The Person of the Year was introduced in a special prime time broadcast on the network, marking the first time that NBC has partnered with the magazine’s Emmy-winning Time Studios on coverage of this scale for Person of the Year.

Actors Issa Rae and Matthew McConaughey kicked off the hour-long, star-studded event that included appearances by Vanessa Bryant, John Cena, Yo Yo Ma, BTS and H.E.R. Bruce Springsteen presented the Person of the Year.

Time expanded its Person of the Year franchise last year by introducing four additional categories including Businessperson of the Year. The decision came after Salesforce (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne Benioff bought Time in 2018 from magazine conglomerate Meredith Corp (MDP), which had acquired Time Inc. in 2017.

In a statement, Time’s editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote: “For changing the American story, for showing that the forces of empathy are greater than the furies of division, for sharing a vision of healing in a grieving world, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are TIME’s 2020 Person of the Year.”

Biden is the 10th President-elect to achieve the title, but his selection marks the first time a President-elect and Vice President-elect have shared the cover together, The Hill news reported.Former Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford are the only US Presidents never named “Person of the Year”.

AAPI Congratulates Dr. Vivek Murthy on His Nomination as US Surgeon General

December 16, 2020January 8, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Profile 0

(Chicago, IL: December 15, 2020) “We congratulate Dr. Vivek Murthy on his appointment as the Surgeon General of the United States” Dr. Sudhakar Jonnalagadda, President of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) said here today. He praised the appointment of Dr. Murthy to be America’s top doctor by the administration led by President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, and “offered fullest support” to Dr. Murthy, while describing the choice of Dr. Murthy as “cementing the reputation of physicians of Indian origin have across America.”
Dr. Vivek Murthy will serve as the US Surgeon General under Biden-Harris administration, a role Murthy held under the Obama administration, President-Elect Joe Biden said here on Monday, December 7th. As he’s set to return to the same position he held from 2014 to 2017, Murthy is expected to have an expanded portfolio, as the President-elect’s team crafts their plans to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
In addition to Dr. Murthy, Joe Biden nominated Xavier Becerra to lead the sprawling Health and Human Services Department, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The appointments Mr. Biden announced on Monday, including other senior officials to the US Health Department, will help round out Biden’s team charged with addressing the pressing COVID-19 crisis, that has taken over 280,000 American lives,” Dr. Sajani Shah, Chair of AAPI BOT said. Last week, Biden announced that Dr. Anthony Fauci would continue his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases while also serving as his chief medical adviser on COVID-19.
Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, President-Elect of AAPI, that represents over 100,000 physicians of Indian origin in the United States, said, “We are proud of Dr. Vivek Murthy and his many accomplishments and look forward to supporting him throughout the process confirmation to be the US Surgeon General, as the nation and the entire world seeks to find best possible solutions to tackle the pandemic that has taken the lives of millions of people around the world.”
Lauding Dr. Murthy “who has been a key coronavirus adviser to President-Elect Biden, regularly briefing him on the pandemic during his campaign and the transition,” Dr. Ravi Kolli, Vice President of AAPI said, “Dr. Murthy was part of Biden’s public health advisory committee as the pandemic first took hold in the US and has been serving as a co-chair of the President-elect’s Covid-19 advisory board during the transition. His ethics, quiet leadership style and impeccable credentials make him the smart choice for this leadership role.”
“Dr. Vivek Murthy represents the next generation of Indian American physicians,” Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, Secretary of AAPI said. “Dr. Murthy was America’s youngest-ever top doctor, and he was also the first surgeon general of Indian-American descent, when appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014. If confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Murthy would play a key role in the administration’s response to many daunting healthcare issuers, including the pandemic that has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.”
“Having a wide range of experiences and passion for science-based approach, Dr. Vivek Murthy will bring in new perspectives to the many healthcare issues that require immediate attention and concrete action plan,” said Dr. Satheesh Kathula, Treasurer of AAPI. Offering fullest cooperation from the Indian American Physician community, he said, “We at AAPI, look forward to working closely with Dr. Murthy and his team to end this deadly pandemic.”
Dr. Murthy 43, has said Americans need a leader who works with the people for the progress of the country. As surgeon general under Obama, Murthy helped lead the national response to the Ebola and Zika viruses and the opioid crisis, among other health challenges.
Dr. Murthy’s commitment to medicine and health began early in life. The son of immigrants from India, he discovered the art of healing watching his parents – Hallegere and Myetriae Murthy – treat patients like family in his father’s medical clinic in Miami, Florida.
During his prior nomination, Indian American Doctors had lobbied earnestly to have Dr. Murthy confirmed as the US Surgeon General under Obama administration. “The feeling of de ja vu was pervasive, of a triumph over injustice with a hard fought battle by the Indian community during his confirmation, with AAPI playing a major role that secured the prize of the highest position occupied by an Indian American, and that too by one from our second generation,” said Dr. Ravi Jahagirdar, who had led a delegation of AAPI leaders to be at the historic oath taking ceremony of Dr. Vivek Murthy as the US Surgeon General at Fort Myer in Virginia across from Washington DC on Wednesday, April 22, 2015.
“The oath ceremony, a proud moment for Indian Americans, was led by Joseph Biden, Vice President and currently President-Elect, held in a large hall like a school stadium, with flags in abundance rigged in from the ceiling and leaning in from the sidewalls,” recalls Dr. Suresh Reddy, the immediate past President of AAPI, who was present at the oath ceremony in the nation’s capital.
“I am proud of our community of Indian physicians for all the progress that we have made over the years, and I know that AAPI has been a critical force in making this process possible. The advice you shared and assistance you kindly offered were important pieces of this journey,” Dr. Vivek Murthy, stated in a letter to Dr. Jayesh B. Shah, a past president of AAPI, who along with AAPI’s Legislative Affairs Chair, Dr. Sampat Shivangi and several others had led several delegations to US Senators, lobbying for his confirmation.
While expressing pride at the nomination of Dr. Murthy, Dr. Jonnalagadda pointed out to US President-elect Joe Biden’s remarks yesterday, describing Indian American nominee for US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy as a “renowned physician” who could help guide Americans safely out of a still ranging coronavirus pandemic. Biden’s remarks came as he spoke to the strength of his “world class” and “crisis tested” health team at an event in Delaware this week.
For more details on AAPI, please visit: www.aapiusa.org

“House Of Spices” Set To Expand In The Us With 2nd Generation Family Owners Share New Vision For The U.S. Market

December 1, 2020January 8, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Community, Profile 0

House of Spices, the oldest South Asian food company in the USA and is widely known by its brand “Laxmi,” has evolved over the years as a business leader in the South Asian food space with multiple leading South Asian food brands under its umbrella offering condiments, pantry items, snacks, candy, spices and frozen foods representing all regions of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Born out of the absolute need of a young family to be able to enjoy cuisines from their homeland while being away from home, it was founded in 1972 by Indian Immigrant G.L Soni who longed to enjoy authentic cuisine from India. As a South Asian immigrant couple living in New York, the Sonis, particularly Mrs. Shobhana Soni, faced challenges daily to find Indian ingredients for home cooking. This inspired Mr. Soni to start importing Indian cooking ingredients and founding the ‘LAXMI’ brand. Mr. Soni fittingly named it Laxmi in honor of his parents, Mr. Laxmidas and Mrs. Laxmibai. Also, since Goddess Laxmi embodies abundance, the name perfectly fit the company’s vision of providing authentic cooking ingredients in abundance to South Asian families living in the USA and helping them stay connected with their cultures through food.

Today, 48 years later the next generation of the family carries the torch and enhanced vision into the expanding marketplace. The children of the founder, Neil & Amarpali Soni have taken over the company with their sights set on aggressive business expansion, new branding, marketing and distribution, while maintaining the family and company values.

The South Asian Market is the fastest growing population in the U.S. since 2000 with a total population of 6 million and growing – a 81% growth over the last 10 years! Furthermore, the Asian Indians have a combined disposable income of $88 billion and an estimated annual buying power of $20 billion and these numbers are growing. The brother and sister duo know that the time is now to leverage this strong growth of the South Asian segment and do so by delivering authentic ethnic South Asian cuisines and ingredients. They strive hard to ensure that every item with their brand name is delivered with purity, quality and value.

The recent rebrand of their logo also demonstrates an effort from the young leaders of the company, to be more inclusive towards the overall South Asian diaspora and representative of the hospitality and abundance that are trademarks of their culture. The new Laxmi logo is contemporary, universal and visually appealing and the icon represents a modernized red and gold Lotus with auspicious royal overtones. But despite the changes and the new vision of the co-presidents, the signature product line encompassing the ‘Laxmi’ Brand stays true to its authentic Indian roots providing the community a way to stay connected to their culture and cuisine. With aspirations to take their product line to the mainstream market, House of Spices is poised to bring the Indian grocery store items into our neighborhood big box grocery retailers and give a new spin to cooking with healthy, authentic and fresh Indian ingredients.

Soccer Legend Diego Maradona Dies at 60

December 1, 2020January 8, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Sports 0

World Cup-winner Diego Maradona has died at the age of 60 at his home on the outskirts of Buenos Aires following a heart attack. Matias Morla, Maradona’s longtime agent, confirmed the news to Efe news agency. Maradona’s spokesman, Sebastian Sanchi, said he died Wednesday of a heart attack two weeks after being released from a hospital in Buenos Aires following brain surgery.

To win the World Cup is the ultimate accolade for any player and occasionally, every four years, one rises above the rest; at Mexico ’86 that man would be Diego Maradona who almost single-handedly lead his side to the summit of world football.

The achievement was made all the greater following the agony of the World Cup of 1982 in which the then World Champions were eliminated in the second group stage while their star player was sent off for lashing out after some pretty brutal treatment at the hands of his Italian Markers. Diego Maradona lifted Argentina to World Cup glory in 1986.

A statement from the Argentina Football Association read: “The Argentine Football Association, through its President Claudio Tapia, expresses its deepest pain at the death of our legend, Diego Armando Maradona. You’ll always be in our hearts.”

Argentina President Alberto Fernandez also confirmed three days of national mourning following the news. Fernandez posted a photograph of himself on Twitter hugging Maradona with the message: “You took us to the highest place in the world. You made us immensely happy. You were the greatest of all. Thanks for existing, Diego. We are going to miss you the rest of our lives.”

The Argentine Professional Soccer League announced that the current First Division tournament will change its name to honor Maradona. In a statement, the league said: “To remember the unforgettable captain of the Argentine national team, the Copa de la Liga Profesional will be renamed to Copa Diego Armando Maradona”

One of the most famous moments in the history of the sport, the “Hand of God” goal, came when the diminutive Maradona punched the ball into England’s net during the 1986 World Cup quarterfinals.

Ahead of his 60th birthday in October, Maradona told France Football magazine that it was his dream to “score another goal against the English, this time with the right hand.” Maradona also captivated fans around the world over a two-decade career with a bewitching style of play that was all his own.

Although his reputation was tarnished by his addictions and an ill-fated spell in charge of the national team, he remained idolised in football-mad Argentina as the “Pibe de Oro” or “Golden Boy.”

The No. 10 he wore on his jersey became synonymous with him, as it also had with Pele, the Brazilian great with whom Maradona was regularly paired as the best of all time. Maradona had recently battled health issues and underwent emergency surgery for a subdural hematoma several weeks ago.

The retired Brazilian star mourned the death of Maradona in a brief statement provided to Reuters by a representative. “Certainly, one day we’ll kick a ball together in the sky above,” he said.

CONMEBOL, the South American Football Confederation on Wednesday announced that it would reschedule the Copa Libertadores match between Maradona’s former club in Argentina, Boca Juniors, and Internacional. The match will now be played on Dec. 2.

Argentina and Barcelona star Lionel Messi was among hundreds of players to send messages remembering Maradona as well as condolences to his family. Lakers great Kobe Bryant, who died in January of this year, was once interviewed by a Spanish-language TV station, and told reporters that Maradona was his idol. “I love Maradona. When I was young in Italy, I used to always watch Maradona when he played for Napoli,” the NBA great, who spent seven years of his childhood in Italy, had said.

Pope Francis, who is from Argentina and a known supporter of San Lorenzo, also mourned Maradona’s passing. “The pope was informed about the death of Diego Maradona, he recalls the times he met him in these past years with affection, and he is remembering him in his prayers, as he did in the past days when he was informed about his condition,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said.

Born in 1960, Maradona captained Argentina to World Cup 1986 glory as well as reaching the final in 1990. At the height of his club career, at Napoli from 1984 to 1991, he helped the side win its only two Italian league titles. There were also notable lows, such as when he was kicked out of the 1994 World Cup after being found guilty of doping.

Napoli said on Wednesday the death was a “devastating blow” for both the city and the club. “We are in mourning,” club spokesman Nicola Lombardo said. “We feel like a boxer who has been knocked out. We are in shock.”

“Everyone is waiting for words from us. But what words could be possible for pain as strong as that we are currently experiencing? Now is the time for tears. Later, it will be words,” the club posted on its Twitter account.

“It is a very sad day for the football world,” Serie A president Paolo Dal Pino said in a statement. “Today, a legend of our sport has left us. One who made us dream and excited fans across the planet. For the next set of fixtures, we will remember him with a special initiative.”

Bold, fast and utterly unpredictable, Maradona was a master of attack, juggling the ball easily from one foot to the other as he raced upfield. Dodging and weaving with his low center of gravity, he shrugged off countless rivals and often scored with a devastating left foot, his most powerful weapon. “Everything he was thinking in his head, he made it happen with his feet,” said Salvatore Bagni, who played with Maradona at Italian club Napoli.

A ballooning waistline slowed Maradona’s explosive speed later in his career and by 1991 he was snared in his first doping scandal when he admitted to a cocaine habit that haunted him until he retired in 1997, at 37.

Since ending his playing career in 1997, the ex-Napoli, Barcelona and Boca Juniors star battled a series of health issues. He was admitted to hospital in January 2019 with internal bleeding in the stomach. He also fell ill at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, where he was filmed passing out in an executive box at the Argentina-Nigeria game.

In 2004, he was hospitalised with severe heart and respiratory problems related to a long battle with drug addiction. He had undergone two gastric bypass operations to control his weight and received treatment for alcohol abuse. Maradona was again hospitalized in early 2007 for acute hepatitis that his doctor blamed on excessive drinking and eating.

He made an unlikely return to the national team in 2008 when he was appointed Argentina coach, but after a quarterfinal exit at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, he was ousted — ultimately picking up another coaching job with the United Arab Emirates club Al Wasl.

“To see him play was pure bliss, true stardom,” teammate Carlos Beltran said. Maradona played from 1976-81 for first division club Argentinos Juniors, then went to Boca Juniors for a year before heading to Barcelona for a world-record $8 million.

No other player, not even Pele in 1958, had dominated a World Cup the way Maradona did at Mexico ’86, scoring five and creating just as many for his team and the fact he did it in such style in an era of ultra-defensive tactics and heavy-handed defending made the achievement even more impressive. He has left a lasting legacy of billions of soccer fans around the world.

‘Not leaving’

TheUNN Corporation

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