Texas, USA (CU)_ According to a media source, Shanti Sethi, a pioneering Indian-American Navy veteran, has been appointed as executive secretary and defense advisor at US Vice President Kamala Harris’s office. According to Herbie Ziskend, Vice President Harris’ senior advisor, Sethi, the first Indian-American captain of a major US Navy warship, will serve at Vice President Harris’ office.
According to her LinkedIn page, Sethi’s new position is to organize National Security Advisor paperwork across the Vice President’s Office. From December 2010 until May 2012, Sethi led the guided-missile warship USS Decatur. Additionally, she was the first female captain of a United States naval warship to visit India. During one of her previous interviews, Sethi had said, “I was able to move on to have a career path that was much more open to me because I was going into this very male-dominated environment”.
According to the media, Sethi’s native was the Nevada city of Reno. Her mother belonged to Canada and became a naturalized US citizen when she was 12. Her father arrived in the US from India in the 1960s. When she entered the Navy in 1993, the combat exclusion law remained in place, limiting her abilities. However, when she became an officer, the Exclusion Act was repealed.
According to a statement, the Navy experience has taught her not to undersell herself or conceal her aspirations. Sethi had said, “You can’t be what somebody else thinks you should be”. She added, “You really have to become comfortable in yourself and say, ‘This is who I am, and I can succeed as who I am. I don’t have to pretend or try to be someone else.’”
Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant from Chennai, rewrote history in 2021 when she became the country’s first female Vice President. The 57-year-old former California Senator also holds the credit of first African-American and South Asian-American vice president.
