The key administration positions were nominated by Biden in last Congress, but were not confirmed by the Senate.
From left: Vivek Murthy, Radha Iyengar Plumb, and Geeta Rao Gupta. (Supplied)
Dr Vivek Hallegere Murthy, Geeta Rao Gupta and Radha Iyengar Plumb were among the half a dozen people of Indian origin who were on Tuesday, 3 December, renominated to key positions in his administration by US President Joe Biden.
All these key administration positions were nominated by Biden in the last Congress, but they were not confirmed by the Senate.
The 118th Congress kicked off on Tuesday with the swearing-in of Senators and the start of the process of electing the Speaker of the US House of Representatives.
Among those renominated by Biden and sent to the Senate were former ambassador to India Richard Verma, to be Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, and the first US surgeon general of Indian origin Dr Vivek Hallegere Murthy, to be Representative of the US on the Executive Board of the World Health Organization.
Biden also sent to the Senate the renomination of Anjali Chaturvedi to be General Counsel, Department of Veterans Affairs, Ravi Chaudhary to be an Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, Geeta Rao Gupta to be Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues, and Radha Iyengar Plumb to be a Deputy Under Secretary of Defense.
Vivek Hallegere Murthy is a vice admiral in the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as surgeon general under three US presidents — Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Biden.
Born in England to immigrants from Karnataka, he is the grandson of the late HC Narayana Murthy, the former director of Mysore Sugar Company.
He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1997 earned an MD from Yale School of Medicine in 2003, and an MBA from Yale School of Management.
Radha Iyengar Plumb was earlier global head of policy analysis at Facebook and a senior economist at the Rand Corporation.
She began her career as an assistant professor at the London School of Economics and she did her postdoctoral work at Harvard University. She’s received her PhD and MS in economics from Princeton, and also holds a BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mumbai-born Geeta Rao Gupta earned a PhD in social psychology from Bangalore University, and an MPhil in organisational behavior from the University of Delhi.
She is an expert on gender, women’s issues, and HIV/AIDS and was executive director of the 3D Program for Girls and Women and senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation since 2017.
She is also a former president of the International Center for Research on Women. She was, under then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, deputy executive director for UNICEF.
(With inputs from PTI)
