New York, USA (US)_ After US Vice President Kamala Harris cast her tiebreaker vote in favour of Indian-American attorney Kiran Ahuja, she became the head of the Office of Personnel Management, a federal agency that handles the nation’s two million plus government personnel. The 49-year-old Kiran Ahuja, a lawyer and activist from the United States, is the first Indian-American to hold this post in the US government. After a 50-50 vote on party lines in the Senate, Kamala Harris stated that she will vote in favor of Kiran Ahuja.
Kamala Harris stated, “The Senate being evenly divided, the Vice President votes in affirmative,” . As Vice President, she has thus far cast sixt tie-breaking votes this year. According to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Kiran Ahuja has more than twenty years of experience in civil service and the nonprofit sector, which includes a key position in the Office of Personnel Management under ex-President Barack Obama.
Dianne Feinstein said, “She has a breadth of knowledge and experience that will serve her well in the role. In particular I’m looking forward to working with her to resolve a critical pay disparity issue between state and federal wildland firefighters. State firefighter salaries can be as much as double that of their federal counterparts, making it difficult to hire and retain skilled federal wildland firefighters”.
Kiran Ahuja started her civil rights lawyer career in the US Department of Justice, where she litigated school racial segregation disputes and registered the department’s first student racial abuse case. Kiran Ahuja was the founding executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, a membership and advocacy agency, from 2003 to 2008. From 2015 until 2017, Kiran Ahuja was the Director of the US Office of Personnel Management’s Chief of Staff. She is presently the CEO of Philanthropy Northwest, a network of charitable institutions in the Northwest.
Kiran Ahuja served as executive director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for six years under the Obama-Biden administration, spearheading efforts to improve access to federal services, resources, and programs for underprivileged Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). Kiran Ahuja was an Indian immigrant brought up in Savannah, Georgia. She graduated from Spelman College with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a law degree from the University of Georgia.
