Jan 23 2025 to Jan 23 2025 6:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Kamala Harris. Nikki Haley. Vivek Ramaswamy. Fareed Zakaria. It is virtually impossible to turn on CNN, read the Wall Street Journal, go to a hospital, attend a university, or browse a bookstore without encountering a sea of Indian names and faces. In her new book, Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America, author and journalist Meenakshi Ahamed provides fascinating portraits of the Indian Americans at the forefront of the wave of Indian success stories.

In this session, Meenakshi draws from her book to provide us with fascinating portraits of a number of well-known figures who have excelled in their fields. Based on a series of interviews and full of fresh and surprising stories, the session will give readers unprecedented insight into the personal strengths that made these extraordinary individuals’ public achievements possible.

The talk will be followed by a discussion with Nirupama Rao, Ambassador & Former Foreign Secretary, GoI followed by an audience Q&A.

Speakers
Meenakshi Narula Ahamed
Author

Meenakshi Narula Ahamed is a freelance journalist and the author of A Matter of Trust: India–US Relations from Truman to Trump, a sweeping narrative history of the turbulent seventy-year relationship between the two countries.

Ahamed’s writing has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Seminar, and Asian Age. She has worked at the World Bank in Washington, DC, and for NDTV, and has served on the boards of Doctors without Borders, Drugs for Neglected Diseases, and the Vellore Christian Medical College Foundation.

Ahamed was born in Calcutta and received an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She divides her time between New York, Los Angeles, and New Delhi.
Nirupama Rao
Ambassador & Former Foreign Secretary, GoI

Nirupama Rao is a former Indian Foreign Service officer. She retired as Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, the senior most position in the Foreign Service, being the second woman to occupy the post (2009-2011). She was the first woman spokesperson (2001-02) of the Indian foreign office. She served as India’s first woman High Commissioner (Ambassador) to Sri Lanka and China. She was Ambassador of India to the United States from 2011 to 2013.

In retirement she has been a Senior Visiting Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute at Brown University where she has taught an undergraduate seniors course on “India in the World” and George Ball Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Ambassador Rao was a Fellow at the India-China Institute of The New School, New York in 2016 and a Public Policy Fellow at The Wilson Center, Washington D.C. in 2017. She is now a Global Fellow of The Wilson Center. She was a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow and a Practitioner-in-Residence at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and a Councillor on the World Refugee and Migration Council. She has an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (2012) from Pondicherry University.