India-born pujari joins Obama’s faith council

Washington: President Barack Obama has appointed Indian American management consultant Anju Bhargava, who is also an ordained 'pujari' (priest), as the member of a faith-based advisory council of the White House.

The council is part of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships and includes religious and secular leaders and scholars from different backgrounds as its members.

The office acts as a resource for nonprofits and community organisations, both secular and faith based, looking for ways to make a bigger impact in their communities, learn their obligations under the law, cut through red tape, and make the most of what the federal government has to offer.

Bhargava is the second Indian American to be appointed to the council after Eboo S Patel, founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago. Both appointments are for one year.

Principal Director at Global Synergy Associates, an international management consulting firm, Bhargava is the founder president of the New Jersey-based Asian Indian Women of America.

In the community arena, she served as a Community Builder Fellow for President Bill Clinton's White House initiative (1998-2000) where she fostered partnerships, facilitated economic, workforce and business development.

Bhargava co-started Asian Indians in Livingston and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr initiative. She is an ordained pujari and counsellor and volunteers at St Barnabas Pastoral Care Department and Livingston's Interfaith Clergy Association.

Bhargava began her career over two decades ago as a banker and has held senior level positions in Corporate America. She has developed an Executive Education programme, Chakravyuhu or the labyrinth, a program for mentoring women to make the "step-change" in their careers in the Corporate World.

She is a graduate of Stella Maris College, Madras University and Rutgers University (MBA), with training at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, American University, Kellogg, Graduate School of Management and Dale Carnegie Institute.