Anju Bhargava, Eboo Patel join Obama’s Advisory Council

Anju Bhargava

NEW YORK: Two Indian Americans have been named as additional members of President Barack Obama’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The Council composed of religious and secular leaders and scholars from different backgrounds forms a Council of advisers to the President on issues relating to the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, including social service provision, community development, social change and relevant public policy issues. 

New Jersey-based Anju Bhargava, President of Asian Indian Women in America, and Pioneer Community Builder and Management Consultant; and Eboo S. Patel, founder & executive director of Interfaith Youth Core, Chicago, IL, are among the additional members appointed for a one-year term.

For the past 20 years Bhargava has been the Hindu representative for Livingston, NJ’s Interfaith Clergy Association and is a member of the Collective Hindu Initiative. She has conducted and participated extensively in interfaith dialogues at the local, state, national and international level. She is the first Hindu woman Pujari in New Jersey. She volunteers at St Barnabas Pastoral Care Department and Livingston’s Interfaith Clergy Association.
Professionally, she is the Principal Director of Global Synergy Associates, an international management consulting firm working at the intersection of strategy, risk, leadership and culture through a combination of both business and human levers. 

A change catalyst pioneer, Bhargava, a management consultant, has organized and advocated to build healthy American communities.  Her distinctive research based approach leverages best practices from many spheres - education, government/politics, civic/social, religious/faith based, medical/nursing, corporate/business, for hands on grass-roots level nation building, organizational development and individual coaching.
Eboo Patel is the founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based institution building the global interfaith youth movement. 

He is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation.

Eboo holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship.

Eboo serves on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation USA, and the National Board of the YMCA.  He has spoken at the TED Conference, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and at universities around the world. 

He is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select group of social entrepreneurs whose ideas are changing the world; was named by Islamica Magazine as one of ten young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America; was chosen by Harvard’s Kennedy School Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch; and was most recently selected to join the Young Global Leaders network of the World Economic Forum.