Who is Neera Tanden, Joe Biden’s pick for budget chief?

Joe Biden is expected to pick Indian-American Neera Tanden as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget at the White House. If approved by the US Senate, Tanden would be the first woman of colour to hold the influential position. 

Currently the Chief Executive of the Center for American Progress, a public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., she has previously served as a healthcare adviser in the Obama administration and was instrumental in drafting provisions covered under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ‘Obamacare’. 

She is a proud Democratic Party supporter, and has worked previously on presidential campaigns of several Democratic candidates, from Michael Dukakis in 1988 (as a college student) to Obama in 2008, and Hillary Clinton in 2016. 

The daughter of Indian immigrants, she pursued a Bachelor of Science degree at University of California, Los Angeles, following which she attended the prestigious Yale Law School.

Tanden has previously spoken on social media about her experiences as a person of colour in America, notably in 2019 when she highlighted the bigotry evident in the rhetoric used by ‘white nationalists’.