Obama names two Indian-Americans to key posts

US President Barack Obama has nominated two Indian-Americans to key posts of Chairman of the National Indian Gaming Commission and member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Jonodev Osceola Chaudhuri has been nominated for the post of Chairman of the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC), according to a statement by the White House.
NIGC is the only federal agency focused solely on the regulation of gambling, though it has many counterpart state and tribal regulatory agencies.
He is currently Vice Chairman and Associate Commissioner of the NIGC, positions he has held since 2013. He has also served as Acting Chairman of the NIGC from October 2013 to April 2014.

Chaudhuri attended Dartmouth, where he earned a BA in 1993. He took a few years off before going to law school at Cornell, getting his law degree in 1999.
Chaudhuri has also worked on Indian law, business and finance and commercial litigation. He struck out on his own in 2006, running his law firm until 2010. It was also during this time that Chaudhuri began sitting as a judge in Native American nation courts.

In 2012, Chaudhuri was named senior counselor to the assistant secretary for Indian affairs in the Department of the Interior, where he served for a year before moving to the gaming board.

The second Indian-American to be nominated by Obama is Deven J Parekh. He has been nominated to be a member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC).
OPIC is the US government's development finance institution. It mobilises private capital to help solve critical development challenges and, in doing so, advances US foreign policy.
Parekh is currently the managing director at Insight Venture Partners, a position he has held since 2001. Parekh held a number of roles at Berenson Minella & Company between 1992 and 2000, including Principal and Vice President.
Parekh is Treasurer and Member of the Board of Governors of the National Academy Museum, a Member of the Board of the Tisch MS Research Center of New York, and a Member of the Greater NY Partnership.

He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Economic Club of New York. From 2010 to 2012, he was a Member of the Advisory Board of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Parekh attended Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.