US President-elect Joe Biden on Friday appointed Mala Adiga, an Indian-American, as the policy director of his wife Jill Biden, who will be the First Lady. According to an ANI report, Adiga served as a senior advisor to Jill and a senior policy advisor on the Biden-Kamala Harris campaign. Prior to this, she was the director for Higher Education and Military Families at the Biden Foundation.

Biden made the announcement of her appointment as he announced the names of four new members of his White House senior staff.

Adiga, during former president Barack Obama’s administration, served as the deputy assistant secretary of state for Academic Programs at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, in the Secretary of State’s Office of Global Women’s Issues as chief of staff and senior advisor to the Ambassador-at-Large, besides as director for human rights on the National Security Staff.

In a statement, Biden said that he was proud of the staffing additions and the perspectives they bring to the role.

“Their dedication to overcoming the challenges facing our country today are rooted in their diverse backgrounds and experiences. They will serve the American people and help build back better, creating a more just, equitable, and united nation,” Bloomberg quoted Biden as saying.

Biden is building his administration even as President Donald Trump delays the official transition process by refusing to concede.

A graduate of Grinnell College, the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and the University of Chicago Law School, Adiga is a lawyer by training and had been a clerk for a federal and had worked for a Chicago law firm before joining the campaign of Obama in 2008.