A Senate committee will today hold the confirmation hearing of Indian-American Nisha Desai Biswal, who had been nominated for the key post of Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia.
If confirmed, Biswal, currently Assistant Administrator for Asia at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), will be the first Indian-American to be appointed as Assistant Secretary of State in the State Department.
Biswal will replace Robert Blake, who has been nominated as the US Ambassador to Indonesia. President Barack Obama had nominated Biswal as his point person for South and Central Asia on July 18.
Her confirmation hearing by the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be presided over by Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia, who is chairman of the sub-committee on Near Eastern and South and Central Affairs.
Biswal has been the Assistant Administrator for Asia at the USAID, since September 2010.
Prior to that, from 2005, she was the Majority Clerk for the State Department and Foreign Operations Sub-committee on the Committee on Appropriations in the US House of Representatives.
From 2002 to 2005, she served as the Policy and Advocacy Director at InterAction.
Previously, she served on the professional staff of the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee from 1999 to 2002.
Biswal served at USAID from 1995 to 1999 in a number of capacities including Special Assistant to the Administrator, Chief of Staff in the Management Bureau, and in the Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance and the Office of Transition Initiatives.
Biswal worked at the American Red Cross from 1993 to 1995 in the Washington DC headquarters and as an overseas delegate in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.
She is also a member of the Congressional-Executive Commission on the People's Republic of China since March 2011.
Daughter of first generation Indian-Americans, Biswal, who received a BA from the University of Virginia, draws her inspiration from her parents' story of journey far from rural India to pursue the American dream and a better life for their children, which she told lawmakers during the confirmation hearing of her current position in 2010.
