Community Conversation
with Farooq Mitha
NEHA DEWAN
Neha has long been active in both local and national politics. Most recently, she founded and served as the National Director for South Asians for Biden, an organization dedicated to engaging, educating, and mobilizing the South Asian community to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. In 2016, Neha served as the National Co-Chair for South Asians for Hillary and was appointed by Hillary Clinton to the National AAPI Leadership Council.
Previously, in 2015, Neha was appointed as a guest of honor by the Consulate General of India in New York City where she was selected to speak about gender equality for International Women's Day. During the 2012 presidential campaign, Neha chaired the New York Chapter of South Asians for Obama and also served on the steering committee for Lawyers for Obama in New York. For several years, Neha served as an Officer of the New York Democratic Lawyers Council, an organization affiliated with the National Lawyers Council of the Democratic National Committee and comprised of Democratic lawyers and voting rights activists. Similarly, for many years, Neha served as an advisory board member of New Leaders Council, a national organization focused on training and supporting progressive political entrepreneurs. She has also been active in her local community board and political clubs. Neha served as the President of the South Asian Bar Association of New York in 2012, and now sits on the organization’s Board of Directors.
Mobilizing the South Asian Community & Building Political Power
ANURIMA BHARGAVA
Anurima Bhargava is the Founder and President of Anthem of Us, a strategic advisory firm promoting dignity, equity, and justice in the building of our workplaces, schools, and communities. From 2010-2016, she led federal civil rights enforcement in schools and institutions of higher education nationwide at the U.S. Department of Justice, and previously directed the education practice at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
She currently serves as Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, to which she was appointed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in December 2018.
From 2016-2018, she served as a fellow at the Institute of Politics and the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard, and as the inaugural Leadership in Government Fellow at Open Society Foundations, where her work focused on trauma experienced within communities after incidents of racial violence.
Bhargava is deeply committed to advancing justice through narrative and storytelling. She advises and produces documentary films and projects, and chairs the U.S. Board of Doc Society, a leading incubator and supporter of documentary film globally.
She co-chairs the National Advisory Board on Public Service at Harvard, serves on the boards of the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund and the Poverty Race Research Action Council, and advises several investment funds and philanthropies. She is a 2017 Presidential Leadership Scholar and has been a member of the Truman National Security Project and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Lastly, Bhargava actively engages in and advises numerous political campaigns and was appointed to the 2020 DNC Platform Committee. She founded Take Back Tuesdays and Anthem of America to provide information and ways to take action around elections, and recently co-founded a multiracial PAC, American Anthem.
Ms. Bhargava earned her law degree from Columbia Law School and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College. She was born and raised on the south side of Chicago.
