Kiran Ahuja becomes the First Indian-American to Head the US Office of Personnel Management

By: WE Staff | Wednesday, 23 June 2021

US Vice President Kamala Harris cast the deciding vote in the bitterly divided Senate to confirm Indian-American Kiran Ahuja as head of the Office of Personnel Management, a federal agency that manages the country's more than two million civil servants.

Kiran Ahuja, a 49-year-old American lawyer and activist, is the first Indian-American to hold this position in the US government. On Tuesday, Kamala Harris announced that she would vote in favour of Kiran Ahuja after the Senate vote was split 50-50 along party lines.

"The Senate being evenly divided, the Vice President votes in affirmative," Kamala Harris said. As a result, she has cast the sixth tie-breaking vote as Vice President this year.

Senator Dianne Feinstein stated that Kiran Ahuja has over two decades of experience in public service and the philanthropic sector, including a senior position in the Office of Personnel Management under former President Barack Obama.

"She has a breadth of knowledge and experience that will serve her well in the role," she said.

"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," she added.

From 2015 to 2017, Kiran Ahuja was the Director of the US Office of Personnel Management's Chief of Staff. She is currently the CEO of Philanthropy Northwest, a network of philanthropic institutions in the Northwest.

She began her legal career as a civil rights lawyer at the United States Department of Justice, where she litigated school desegregation cases and filed the department's first student racial harassment case. Kiran Ahuja was the founding executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, an advocacy and membership organisation, from 2003 to 2008.

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