WASHINGTON: Three Indian Americans Appointed In White House Fellowship Programme

WASHINGTON: The White House on Monday named
19 young emerging leaders as its fellows for 2021-22, three of whom are Indian
Americans.

The
prestigious White House Fellowship programme embeds professionals from diverse
backgrounds for a year of working as a full-time, paid fellow for White House
staff, cabinet secretaries and other senior government officials.

Indian
Americans who made it to the list are Joy Basu and Sunny Patel from California,
and Aakash Shah from New Jersey.

The
President’s Commission on White House Fellows described it as the most diverse
class in the history of the programme, which was created in 1964 by the then
President Lyndon B Johnson.

Joy Basu
from San Francisco has been placed at the White House Gender Policy Council.

Earlier,
she served as a senior adviser to innovative businesses seeking authentic and
impact-integrated growth.

She was
the first chief of staff at TPG Growth, where she worked as a key architect and
builder of The Rise Fund, a ground-breaking impact investment platform.

She also
served as The Rise Fund’s global sector lead for food and agriculture. Prior to
joining the TPG, Joy was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she
focused on agricultural development, working with businesses, governments and
donors to improve food systems in emerging markets.

Ms Basu
also served as project manager to the World Economic Forum’s New Vision for
Agriculture and has supported strategic projects for the Ethiopian Agricultural
Transformation Agency and Starbucks Coffee Company.

Ms Basu
earned her JD and MBA from Stanford University with a certificate in public
management and social innovation.

While at
Stanford, she served as co-president of the Women of Stanford Law, as an
Arbuckle Fellow and as a leader of the Afghanistan Legal Education Project. Ms
Basu holds a BA in Public Policy and Economics from Duke University.

She
currently serves as a trustee for the Heifer International Foundation and a
term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Placed at
the Department of Homeland Security, Sunny Patel is a child and adolescent
psychiatrist and public health physician with interests in building equitable
health systems that serve children and families.

He
recently completed his fellowship at NYU, where he created a model embedding
mental health services in the paediatric oncology clinic.

He also
launched a comprehensive mental health response for thousands of frontline
workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and volunteered as a palliative care
physician at Bellevue Hospital.

Mr Patel
has spearheaded health interventions for vulnerable populations in the United
States and abroad, including in India, Thailand, and Dominican Republic. He has
spent the past decade working with refugee populations and has conducted
forensic psychological examinations for asylum seekers with NYU and Physicians
for Human Rights.

Mr
Patel’s research has been published in numerous journals and informed policy
initiatives, including work presented at the United Nations General Assembly.

He has
also served as a resident tutor in medicine at Adams House of Harvard College.
Sunny completed his adult psychiatry residency at Cambridge Health Alliance and
Harvard Medical School.

He has an
MD from the Mayo Clinic, an MPH from Harvard, and bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in biology and physiology, respectively, from UCLA with college and
departmental honours.

Aakash
Shah has been placed at the Department of Health and Human Services. A
practicing emergency room doctor at Hackensack Meridian Health, he helped treat
some of the earliest confirmed cases of COVID-19 during the pandemic.

Mr Shah
also serves as the Director of Addiction Medicine and the Medical Director of
Project HEAL (a hospital-based violence intervention program) at Jersey Shore
University Medical Center as well as the Medical Director of New Jersey Reentry
Corp.

His work
in those roles has resulted in several reforms, including the elimination of
prior authorisation requirements for medications for opioid use disorder and he
received the bipartisan endorsement of five former New Jersey governors.

He
previously served as the Founder and Executive Director of Be Jersey Strong,
which represented one of the largest and most diverse efforts to connect the
uninsured to coverage in the nation and was honoured by President Barack Obama
at the White House for its impact.

He has
also served as an adviser to several local, state and federal campaigns and
policymakers.