By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : President Barack Obama has named Indian American lawyer, Preeta D. Bansal, as Vice Chair of an administrative reform body described as a “public-private partnership designed to make government work better”.
The appointment of Bansal, currently the General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor for the Office of Management and Budget, and nine other official and non-official members of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) was announced by the White House Thursday.
“I am pleased that these outstanding individuals will lend their talents to ACUS’s vital mission of providing nonpartisan, practical assessments and recommendations to improve agency procedures and operations,” Obama said.
“ACUS is a public-private partnership designed to make government work better, and the members of the Council are committed individuals from distinguished backgrounds who are devoted to enhancing the efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of our government,” he said.
Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Bansal was a partner and head of the Appellate Litigation Practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP in New York City.
She also served as the Solicitor General of the State of New York from 1999-2001, where she helped supervise 600 attorneys in the New York Attorney General’s office.
While in private practice from 2003-2009, Bansal served as a Commissioner of the bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, serving as Chair in 2004-2005.
Raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, Bansal was a Visiting Professor of constitutional law and federalism at the University of Nebraska College of Law in 2002-2003.
Earlier in her career, Bansal was a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court, counsellor in the United States Department of Justice, and a Special Counsel in the Office of the White House Counsel.
Bansal received a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where she was Supervising Editor of the Harvard Law Review, and an A.B., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Harvard-Radcliffe College.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])