Biden names two Indian-Americans in National Security Council of WH

US President-elect Joe Biden on Friday named Indian-American Sumona Guha as senior director for South Asia and Tarun Chhabra as senior director for Technology and National Security, as he announced several key appointments to the National Security Council of the White House. Guha was co-chair of the South Asia foreign policy working group on the Biden-Harris campaign, and serves on the transition’s State Department Agency Review Team.

Currently senior vice president at Albright Stonebridge Group, she previously served in the State Department as a foreign service officer and later, on the Secretary of State’s policy planning staff where she focused on South Asia. During the Obama-Biden administration, she was special sdvisor for national security affairs to then Vice President Biden. Guha is a graduate of Johns Hopkins and Georgetown University.

Named as senior director for Technology and National Security, Chhabra is a senior fellow at the Centre for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. He was previously a fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House. During the Obama-Biden Administration, Chhabra served on the National Security Council staff as director for Strategic Planning and director for Human Rights and National Security Issues, and at the Pentagon as a speechwriter to the Secretary of Defence. Born in Tennessee and raised in Louisiana, Chhabra is a first-generation American and a graduate of Stanford University, Oxford University, and Harvard Law School.