Harmeet Dhillon has become the first ever woman of Indian Origin to be a member of the powerful Republican National Committee. With election to the nation office during the California state GOP convention, Dhillon is expected to be charged with representing the California Republican Party during July’s national convention.
The election to the national committee is another milestone to Dhillon, after she had become the first woman to be elected as the party’s vice chair, where she is currently serving in her third year. Her campaign for committeewoman was unopposed, she did receive the endorsement of nearly every major member of the party within the state. Dhillon, who was born in Chandigarh, and is a Sikh, got elected at the California Republican Party convention.
“I don’t particularly like the way that our debates have been structured,” Dhillon said. “I don’t particularly like the timing and the sequence of the primaries in some states, and I think that we need some changes there.”
According to her, “Donald Trump, seems to be very popular amongst Indian-American first-generation immigrants. I think when a lot of them came to this country they wanted to become millionaires and they wanted to be real estate barons and (they see him and think) ‘look, that guy did it,’ so there’s a lot of admiration for his business acumen and his success story.”
A nationally recognized trial lawyer, Dhillon, 47, was born in India, but raised in rural North Carolina after her Sikh parents moved to the US. “For the next four years starting in late July, I will help shape the policies of the party of Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Tubman, the party of liberty and opportunity,” Dhillon said in a statement, after the election. Based in San Francisco, Dhillon among other things also sat on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union, and once made a financial contribution to Kamala Harris’ campaign for local office.
Following her clerkship with Paul V Niemeyer of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Dhillon’s practice in New York, London, and the San Francisco Bay Area has focused on federal and state commercial litigation and arbitration, with a particular emphasis on unfair competition/trade secret misappropriation, intellectual property (including trademark litigation and internet torts), complex contractual disputes, and First Amendment litigation.
“I could not have done this without the support of a huge number of friends old and new and my family, who have brought me to where I am today. Thank you to my parents Parminder Kaur Dhillon and Tejpal Singh Dhillon for instilling conservative values in me. I am truly honored,” she said.
