Political Awareness

Vinai K. Thummalapally - U.S. Ambassador to Belize

Vinai Thummalapally was confirmed as U.S. Ambassador to Belize by the U.S. Senate on July 24, 2009. Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Thummalapally was the President of MAM-A Inc., formerly Mitsui Advanced Media, the nation’s leading manufacturer and distributor of archival recordable optical discs. Ambassador Thummalapally has served in several other similar roles in his 31-year career, including the plant manager for WEA Manufacturing, the Managing Director for Clines Printing and Office Products, and Manufacturing Manager of Disc Manufacturing, Inc. In addition to holding two U.S. patents for design of optical disc manufacturing, he has received several Outstanding Service awards for his professional accomplishments.

Originally from Hyderabad, India, Ambassador Thummalapally moved to the U.S. in 1974 to pursue his engineering studies. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from California State University in 1977 and completed post graduate Business Administration courses at California State University in 1980 and the University of Tennessee in 1995. Ambassador Thummalapally speaks Telugu, Hindi and Urdu.

Natwar M. Gandhi - Chief Financial Officer, District of Columbia

Natwar M. Gandhi is the Chief Financial Officer for the District of Columbia and is responsible for the city’s finances, including its approximately $7 billion in annual operating and capital funds. He was appointed to this position on June 7, 2000, and was reappointed in January 2007.

As the independent CFO, Gandhi manages the District’s financial operations, which include more than 1,000 staff members in tax and revenue administration; the treasury, comptroller and budget offices; economic/fiscal analysis and revenue estimation functions; agency financial operations; and the DC Lottery. He works closely with congressional committees and the US Office of Management and Budget staff that oversee District affairs. He also regularly interacts with the Wall Street financial community, including rating agencies, regarding the District’s financial matters.

Gandhi has built on the District’s financial progress by securing multiple rating upgrades (a total of 13 rating steps since FY2000) from the major rating agencies for its general obligation bonds, which are currently rated A+ by Standard and Poor’s and Fitch Ratings and A1 by Moody’s Investors Service. These are the highest ratings ever assigned to the District of Columbia’s general obligation bonds. In 2009, Standard & Poor’s assigned a rating of AAA to the District’s inaugural offering of income tax revenue bonds, which were rated AA by Fitch and Aa2 by Moody’s. Savings on debt service costs from the income tax bonds are estimated to total $28 million between FY2010 and FY2013.

As CFO, Gandhi sits on the boards of the Washington Convention and Sports Authority and Destination DC.

Prior to this appointment, Gandhi served as deputy chief financial officer for tax and revenue, leading an organization that administers the District of Columbia’s tax laws. When Gandhi joined the Office of Tax and Revenue (OTR) in 1997, the agency was in disarray. Its revenue base was shrinking, and employee morale was sinking. Under his leadership, OTR demonstrated a remarkable turnaround. Successes included collecting substantially more in tax revenue than in previous years, turning projected city deficits into huge surpluses; issuing more than 150,000 tax refunds within 15 days during the 1999 and 2000 tax-filing seasons; and establishing a new one-stop, walk-in customer service center to improve public outreach.

Kiran Ahuja - Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

Kiran Ahuja was appointed on December 14, 2009 to the position of Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs), housed in the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, DC. In this capacity, she is responsible for directing the efforts of the White House Initiative and the Presidential Advisory Commission on AAPIs to advise federal agency leadership on the implementation and coordination of federal programs as they relate to AAPIs across executive departments and agencies. The White House Initiative on AAPIs works with these entities to improve the quality of life and opportunities for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through increased access to, and participation in, federal programs in which they may be underserved.

For almost twenty years, Ms. Ahuja has dedicated herself to improving the lives of women of color in the U.S. Well-known as a leader among national and grassroots AAPI and women's rights organizations, Ms. Ahuja served as the founding Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF) from 2003-2008. Through her leadership, Ms. Ahuja built NAPAWF from an all-volunteer organization to one with a paid professional staff who continue to spearhead successful policy and education initiatives, expanded NAPAWF's volunteer chapters and membership, and organized a strong and vibrant network of AAPI women community leaders across the country.

Ms. Ahuja grew up in Savannah, Georgia, where her understanding of race, gender and ethnicity was formed as a young Indian immigrant. She attended Spelman College, an historically black college, and the University of Georgia School of Law. Following law school, she was chosen as one of five Honors Program trial attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, where she litigated education-related discrimination cases and filed the Department's first peer-on-peer student racial harassment lawsuit. In addition, she participated in the Division's National Origin Working Group as part of a core group of attorneys who organized response efforts for the Division after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Hari Sreenivasan - Correspondent, Public Broadcasting Service

In 2009 Hari Sreenivasan joined the new PBS NewsHour as an online and on-air correspondent. Hari makes regular news updates throughout the day on the NewsHour’s Web site in addition to appearing nightly on the program. While at CBS News, Hari reported regularly on the "CBS Evening News," "The Early Show;" and "CBS Sunday Morning." Before that, he served as an anchor and correspondent for ABC News, working extensively on the network's 24-hour digital service "ABC News Now." Hari also reported for "World News Tonight" and "Nightline." 

Previously, he ran his own production company and freelanced as a reporter for KTVU-TV in Oakland, Calif. (2002-04). Sreenivasan served as an anchor and senior correspondent for CNET Broadcast in San Francisco, Calif. (1996-2002) and was a reporter for WNCN-TV in Raleigh, N.C. (1995-96)

He is the recipient of the 1997, 1998 and 1999 Outstanding Broadcast Story Award presented by the South Asian Journalists Association, an organization for which he served as a board member from 2001-04. Sreenivasan is also a member of the Asian American Journalists Association and a 2003 graduate of their Executive Leadership Program. He was born in Mumbai, India, where he also spent his early childhood. Sreenivasan graduated from the University of Puget Sound in 1995 with a degree in mass communication and minors in politics and philosophy.

Neera Tanden, Chief Operating Officer, Center for American Progress

Neera Tanden has over a decade of experience in the executive and legislative branch, as well as in campaigns, local government, and think tanks. As Chief Operating Officer, she leads strategic planning for the organization, manages operations, and oversees the health care program. Neera Tanden has most recently served as senior advisor for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services, advising Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and working on the president’s health reform team to pass the bill. In that role, she developed policies around reform, and worked with the Hill and outside groups on the president’s health reform legislation.

Prior to that, Tanden was the director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden presidential campaign, where she managed all domestic policy proposals, including health care. Before that, Tanden served as policy director for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign where she directed all policy work, ranging from domestic policy to the economy to foreign affairs, and managed day to day policy announcements. In that role, she also oversaw the debate preparation process for the candidate.

Before the presidential campaign, Tanden was Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Center for American Progress, which she rejoined. She was one of the first senior staff members at CAP, joining as Senior Vice President for Domestic Policy when CAP first opened its doors. In between, Tanden was Senator Clinton’s legislative director, where she oversaw all policy in the Senate office. In 2000, she was Hillary Clinton’s deputy campaign manager and issues director for her Senate campaign in New York. Tanden also served as associate director for domestic policy in the Clinton White House, and senior policy advisor to the first lady.
Tanden currently has a regular column for The New Republic online and has appeared on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox. She received her bachelor of science from UCLA and her law degree from Yale Law School.

Avik Roy, Author of The Apothecary

Avik Roy is author of The Apothecary, the influential health policy blog on Forbes.com. He is a Senior Fellow for Health Care Policy at the Heartland Institute. He has written on health policy, fiscal matters, and other policy issues for Forbes, National Review, National Affairs, USA Today, and other publications.

Avik is also a health care analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co., a private investment firm in New York City. Prior to his current position, he worked as an analyst and portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan, Bain Capital, and other firms. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied molecular biology, and the Yale University School of Medicine.

Korok Ray, Assistant Professor, Georgetown University McDonough School of Business

Korok Ray is an economist on the faculty of the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. He has held this position since August of 2008.

From July 2007 to August 2008, Korok served as Senior Economist on the White House Council of Economic Advisers, covering financial markets. He reported to the President’s chief economic adviser on a wide variety of financial policy issues during the historic Financial Crisis of 2008.

From 2004 to 2007, Korok was an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Korok graduated from the University of Chicago with a BS in Mathematics in 1999. He then went directly to Stanford University, where he completed his PhD in Economics in 2004.

Korok’s research interests focus primarily on compensation and corporate governance. He also studies international financial regulation, labor markets in the financial sector, and the design and structure of the corporation. He also writes and speaks to a broad audience about financial and economic policy.

Nicholas Rathod, Deputy Director for Intergovernmental Affairs, White House

Nicholas Rathod is the Deputy Director for Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House. Rathod served as the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for the Obama-Biden Transition Project. Rathod has also worked as the Political Director for Governor Eliot Spitzer (NY) and Senior Manager of State and Regional Affairs for the Center for American Progress. In addition, Rathod was a community organizer - organizing DC's immigrant communities around language access issues and a civil rights attorney -representing minority communities who were discriminated against in lending, including a one billion dollar settlement on behalf of African American farmers. Rathod is also active in the South Asian community co-founding South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) as well as South Asians for Obama (SAFO).

Gautam Raghavan, Deputy White House Liasion, U.S. Department of Defense

Gautam Raghavan has served in the White House Liaison Office of the Department of Defense since April 2009, as Special Assistant, Deputy White House Liaison, and from December 2010 to May 2011, as Acting White House Liaison. In this position, he is responsible for the recruitment, vetting, and placement of over 250 political appointees throughout the Department of Defense in support of the goals and objectives of the President and the Secretary of Defense. In 2010, Raghavan also served as Outreach Lead for the Comprehensive Review Working Group, the internal DoD effort directed by the Secretary of Defense to assess and plan for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” where he advised the CRWG Co-Chairs on strategic outreach to key external stakeholders.

Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Raghavan worked with political operatives, donors, community leaders, activists, and campaign staff to strengthen and expand the Democratic Party and increase the visibility and participation of Asian Americans and
Pacific Islanders in Democratic politics, most notably as Midwest Finance Director for the Democratic National Committee and Director of the Obama campaign’s national Asian American Finance Committee. He serves on the Boards of New Leaders Council of Washington, D.C., a non-profit organization that provides education and training for
progressive political entrepreneurs and community leaders, and Stanford PRIDE, Stanford University’s LGBT alumni organization.

Raghavan received his B.A. in Science, Technology, and Society from Stanford University and is completing a Masters degree in Political Management from The George Washington University

Dhaval Patel, Counsel, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Dhaval Patel is Counsel at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where she oversees a range of regulatory and legislative issues, including matters related to the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act. From 2010 to 2011, Patel served as Deputy Associate Counsel for Presidential Personnel at the White House, where she conducted the confidential vetting of individuals being considered for Presidential appointments and recognition across the administration. In 2008, Patel was part of the Ohio Campaign for Change (Barack Obama For President) statewide voter protection leadership team. In addition, from 2004 to 2010, she served as a Commissioner on the District of Columbia Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs, pursuant to appointments by Mayor Anthony Williams and Mayor Adrian Fenty. Patel has previously served as Senior Counsel with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and has worked at the World Bank, the United Nations, and in the private sector at a securities firm in New York.

S. Toby Chaudhuri, Chief Strategist, Tobiko Strategies

Toby Chaudhuri works with people in public office, political campaigns and major advocacy and labor organizations to develop messages and strategies to communicate with the public and influence public policy. He currently works closely with the Obama Administration, where he advises several White House Initiatives and democracy and governance projects around the world for the U.S. State Department.

Most recently, Chaudhuri helped Dilma Rousseff become the first female president of Brazil and helped re-elect Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. and Sen. Michael Bennett, D-Colo., in major upset elections last year. He also worked with the State Department to train Egyptian, Tunisian, Moroccan and Algerian entrepreneurs and activists on how to use new communications strategies – before the now-famous Spring Revolutions began sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.

Chaudhuri has managed more than $100 million in state and federal campaigns in the U.S. and abroad and has worked at the helm of national media operations. He worked hard to protect children as civil rights leader Marian Wright Edelman’s spokesman and media strategist at the Children’s Defense Fund; took on corporate polluters to provide safe drinking water and clean air as a political appointee to President Bill Clinton; and worked to elect several principled state and federal candidates including serving as deputy press secretary to Vice President Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.

Chaudhuri has received several accolades for his work, including the American Association of Political Scientists’ Pollie Award, Campaigns & Elections Magazine’s Rising Star Award and the highly-coveted Reed Award and India Abroad’s Community Service Award. He has appeared in many major daily newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and The Times of India and as a commentator on National Public Radio, the BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera English. He has been profiled in The Boston Globe, National Journal, Campaigns & Elections Magazine and India Abroad.

Manu Raju, Congressional Reporter, Politico

Manu Raju is a congressional reporter at POLITICO. Prior to joining POLITICO, Raju covered the Senate leadership for The Hill newspaper, and before that, he reported for Congressional Quarterly, writing about energy and environmental issues for its weekly magazine and daily issue. Raju got his start in Washington as an associate editor and reporter at Inside Washington Publishers, where he covered federal environmental policy. 

Before jumping into the world of Washington journalism, Raju worked in broadcast media, including a stint at a local NBC station in Madison, Wis. 

Raju, who has won multiple journalism awards for feature writing and spot-news reporting, is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, a native of the greater Chicago area and a long-suffering Cubs and Bears fan. Raju hails from a family of writers, including his late grandfather, Gopalakrishna Adiga, a preeminent poet in the Kannada language whose works are widely studied in India today. Raju lives in Northwest D.C. with his wife, Archana.

J. Ashwin Madia

Interim Chairman of VoteVets.org, J. Ashwin Madia, joined the U.S. Marine Corps and moved to Quantico, Virginia for 6 months of basic training, after Law School. He served in Iraq from September 2005 to March 2006. Madia was lead attorney in over one hundred trials, including thirteen jury trials. He is most proud of his work successfully defending a gay Marine from administrative discharge in 2005, when it was clear that commanders were using disparate standards in their treatment of this Marine compared to other Marines. Madia was a long-time Republican, who supported Bob Dole for President in 1996, and Senator John McCain in 2000, before running as a Democrat for Congress in Minnesota in 2008. Madia previously was Vice Chairman of VoteVets.org, before assuming Interim Chairman duties in December 2010 for Jon Soltz, who took a leave of absence for a year, to serve in Iraq as part of "Operation New Dawn."

Anil Mammen - President, Mammen Group Inc

Anil Mammen is a political consultant with over 20 years experience working with Democratic Party candidates. He has helped elect Governor Mark Dayton (MN), U. S. Senator Tim Johnson (SD), Congressman Gerry Connolly (VA-11), Congressman Steny Hoyer (MD-05), Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02), Congressman Jerry McNerney (CA-11), Congressman Mike Michaud (ME-02), Congressman John Olver (MA-01), Congresswomen Allyson Schwartz (PA-13), and over a hundred other candidates at the local, state, and federal levels.

In 1999, he founded Mammen Group, Inc. in Washington, DC. The firm specializes in targeted communication programs for Democratic campaigns, trade associations, labor unions and progressive organizations. Anil’s parents emigrated to the U.S. from Kerala and he grew up in Allentown, PA. He graduated from the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and from Kenyon College in Ohio.

Bhavna Pandit - Managing Partner, Pandit Strategic Consulting

Bhavna Pandit is the Managing Partner of Pandit Strategic Consulting (PSC). In this role she oversees the Washington, DC and national fundraising strategy for Democratic Members of Congress, candidates running for office, and Political Action Committees (PAC's). Pandit is responsible for building relationships with PAC’S as well as donors across the country for Congressional clients and is a liaison between Members of Congress and the business community in Washington, DC. PSC advises individuals and companies on political and business strategy, focusing on strategic partnerships and political outreach. 
 


Prior to establishing PSC, Pandit was the Democratic Political Director for the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB), one of the largest Trade Associations in Washington DC and among one of the top ten PAC's in the nation. At NAHB, Pandit supervised all PAC fundraising activities, initiatives and events. In addition, she was the liaison between NAHB and various Democratic committees, groups and Members of Congress. 
 


Prior to joining NAHB, Pandit was a Deputy Finance Director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), under the leadership of former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt. She planned and executed national fundraising events and worked closely with Members of Congress and donors to raise funds directly for the DCCC.

Pandit is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, where she worked on numerous campaigns around the state, and is a graduate of Louisiana State University.

Parag V. Mehta - Special Assistant to the Director, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, U.S. Department of Labor

Parag Mehta is a communications specialist with more than a decade of experience in government, politics and community advocacy. He has served in the presidential administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He has also worked on political campaigns at the local, state and federal levels.

Mehta served on President Obama’s Transition Team as a Public Liaison for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Americans. He also managed outreach on education and the arts. In 2009, former Governor Gary Locke recruited Mehta to manage his confirmation to become U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

From 2005-2008, Mehta worked for the Democratic National Committee during four of the most successful election cycles in the modern history of the Party. He spent three years as the DNC’s Training Director, conducting campaign workshops for more than 22,000 staff, candidates, leaders and activists in all 50 states and around the world. During the 2008 general election, he served as the Party’s Director of External Communications.

In 2004 Mehta was Deputy Political Director of America Votes, one of the largest political action committees in the nation. Prior to that, he served as a Deputy Political Director for the presidential campaign of former Governor Howard Dean.

Mehta is a second-generation Indian American from Temple, Texas. He currently directs communications for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, a civil rights agency at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Atul Nakhasi

Atul Nakhasi hails from Waterloo, IA and graduated from the University of Iowa in 2009 with his BSc in Neuroscience. During his time at Iowa, he was actively involved in raising political awareness and advocacy as President of the University of Iowa College Democrats. His efforts contributed to the defeat of a city referendum and record-breaking youth turnout during the historic Iowa Caucuses of 2008 and were recognized nationally by major media outlets, including Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, ABC World News, and NPR. Atul now serves on the Committee on Legislation and Advocacy for the American Medical Association as a first-year medical student at Johns Hopkins. He hopes to continue his advocacy efforts toward equitable and affordable healthcare far into the future.

Anu Rangappa - Principal, Dewey Square Group

Anu Rangappa is a Principal at the Dewey Square Group (DSG), a national public-affairs firm, with fifteen years of experience in designing and implementing public outreach efforts for political, corporate, non-profit, labor union and trade association clients. Her most recent work has been focused in the private sector, drawing on her previous, political experience.

In 2006, Rangappa worked on behalf of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on several field programs for battleground districts, the year Democrats retook control of the U.S. House of Representatives. During 2004 election cycle, Rangappa worked with the senior strategy team for the Kerry/Edwards presidential campaign on targeting, voter contact and get-out-the-vote efforts. In 2002, she helped craft campaign plans for gubernatorial candidates on behalf of the Democratic Governors Association and for other federal races in the primaries and for the general election. And in 2001, she worked with the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial campaigns utilizing new technology for voter turnout activities and Election Day operations resulting in remarkable shifts of Democratic participation.

Prior to joining DSG, Rangappa was a manager for special projects throughout the Gore/Lieberman Presidential Campaign, including being on-the-ground for the Iowa Caucuses, the Democratic National Convention, the Presidential Debates, Election Night 2000 and the Florida Re-Count. Beginning in 1996 and through the second Clinton Administration, she worked for the White House Office of Scheduling and Advance. There she traveled extensively across the U.S. and internationally preceding visits by President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, coordinating efforts for effective media coverage by the traveling White House Press Corps. In 1995, she was a White House intern in the West Wing office of Presidential Scheduling. Rangappa is a graduate of the College of William and Mary.