WASHINGTON: Biden Nominates Indian-American Lawyer To Head Office Of Personnel Management

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden has
nominated Indian- American lawyer and rights activist Kiran Ahuja to head the
Office of Personnel Management, a federal agency that manages America’s more
than two million civil servants.

If
confirmed by the Senate, 49-year-old Ahuja would become the first
Indian-American to serve this top position in the US government.

Ahuja
served as the Chief of Staff to Director of the US Office of Personnel Management
from 2015 to 2017. She has more than two decades of public service and
nonprofit/philanthropic sector leadership experience.

Ahuja
currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Philanthropy Northwest, a
regional network of philanthropic institutions.

She began
her career as a civil rights lawyer at the US Department of Justice, litigating
school desegregation cases, and filing the department”s first student racial
harassment case.

From 2003
to 2008, Ahuja served as the founding executive director of the National Asian
Pacific American Women’s Forum, an advocacy and membership organisation.

During
the Obama-Biden administration, she spent six years as executive director of
the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, leading
efforts to increase access to federal services, resources and programmes for
underserved Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs).

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 revitalise the workforce, the daily reported.

Congressman
Gerry Connolly, Chairman of the House Government Operations subcommittee,
welcomed the nomination of Ahuja.

“Ahuja”s
years of leadership experience and knowledge of OPM are much needed to rebuild
an agency that was targeted for elimination in the last administration,”
he said.

“Ahuja
is a well-known and expert leader who will instill stability and confidence in
OPM as it recruits, hires, retains, and retires our 2.8 million federal
employees. I look forward to her swift Senate confirmation, and then getting to
the hard work of transforming OPM into the human resources and leadership
training organization our nation needs it to be,” Connolly said.

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 nonprofit
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.

In a
statement, American Federation of Government employees said Ahuja brings a
wealth of experience in federal personnel matters and her record of advocacy on
behalf of women of colour is reason to be optimistic that she will make it a
priority to reverse the previous administration”s active undermining of
diversity and inclusion efforts across the government.

“Ahuja
has the knowledge and experience that OPM needs to guide human resource policy
for the federal workforce. And importantly, she is committed to protecting the
non-partisan civil service and ensuring that it reflects the diversity of the
United States,” said National Treasury Employee Union president Tony
Reardon.

“During
the Trump administration, the agency was constantly disrupted by outside
efforts to break it up and dismantle it, to the detriment of the federal
employees who rely on OPM for independence and management of important federal
employee programmes.

 “We believe this appointment
will result in steady, professional leadership at OPM that is committed to
protecting its unique role in administering federal retirement programmes and
other human resource management priorities,” he said.