People in the news

Sonal Shah

Director, White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation (since April 2009)

(White House)

Why She Matters

Shah is the first director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, a new entity that she helped conceptualize during her work on the Obama-Biden transition team. The office has dual functions: to help carry out the first family's expanded national service agenda and to identify and fund successful social innovation programs throughout the country.

A native of India who grew up in Houston, Shah came to the White House with experience in the government, non-profit and private sectors. She worked in the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration, launched a non-profit to benefit the Indian diaspora and most recently served as vice president for global development at Google's philanthropic arm.

Read more

Background

At a Glance

Career History: Co-chair, Obama - Biden transition team technology group (2008-2009); vice president of global development initiatives, Google.org (2007-2008); vice president, Goldman Sachs (2004-2007); associate director, Center for American Progress (2003-2004); director of operations and programs, Center for Global Development (2001-2003); co-founder and director, Indicorps (2001-2009) director/senior adviser, Treasury Department (1995-2001);
Birthday: May 20, 1968
Hometown: Born in India, raised in Houston, Texas

Alma Mater: University of Chicago, B.A. 1990; Duke University, M.A. 1994
Spouse: Single
Religion: Hindu

Path to Power

In 1972, Shah's father moved the family from Gujarat to New York City, where he worked as a boiler inspector for apartment buildings and chemical plants. They eventually settled in the suburbs of Houston, where Shah and her sister became standout tennis players.

Shah, who describes her upbringing as middle class, recalled her tennis-playing days as the first time she was exposed to communities that were far less fortunate than her family. Her tennis coach lived in Houston's fifth ward, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. "Going into these communities, we learned about our own priviledge," Shah said. Her parents, she said, also imparted a dedication to service. The message was, she recalled, "'service first, and everything else after.'"

Read more

Shah attended the University of Chicago and took her first job out of college at Andersen Consulting, where she spent three years in the early 1990s. She then went back to school, earning a master's in economics from Duke University.

Clinton Administration

Degree in hand, Shah joined the Clinton administration in 1995. She held a variety of posts in the Treasury Department and worked on several major international issues. She headed the office overseeing strategy for sub-Saharan Africa, where she helped to negotiate a $40 billion debt cancellation and oversaw $1 billion in aid programs. Shah also worked on the U.S. response to the Asian financial crisis and served as an attache during the rebuilding of post-war Bosnia and Kosovo.

Non-Profit World

After the Clinton administration, Shah headed to the non-profit world. She held posts at the new Center for Global Development and the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank launched by former Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta.

At the same time, Shah was starting her own non-profit, Indicorps, along with her sister. Created in 2001, Indicorps aims to increase civic participation among the Indian diaspora as a way of furthering development in India. The group's core purpose, according to its web site, is to "nurture a new brand of socially conscious leaders with the character, knowledge, commitment, and vision to transform India and the world."

Private Sector

In 2004, Shah went to work for Goldman Sachs, serving as a vice president and leading its new environmental division as the company began to take its own carbon footprint into account while also helping clients develop new environmental strategies.

After three years at Goldman Sachs, Shah moved to San Francisco to become head of global development for Google.org, the Internet giant's philanthropic arm. There she helped to conceive and implement development projects and led a course on global development.

Obama Campaign

Shah joined the Obama campaign while in San Francisco, knocking on doors for the Illinois senator during both the primary and general election campaigns. After the November 2008 election, she was tapped to lead the transition team's working group on technology, innovation and reform. She worked closely with Obama adviser Melody Barnes, the soon-to-be chairman of the Obama's Domestic Policy Council. It was Barnes who ultimately sold President Barack Obama on the need for a new office for social innovation and civic participation, which Shah was chosen to lead.

Controversy

Shah's role on the transition team and her appointment to the White House was hampered by criticism from some Indian-Americans over her ties to a right-wing Hindu nationalist group called Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). The group has been condemned for its ties to a group that participated in the 2002 violence responsible for the death of nearly 1,000 people, many of them Muslims, in the Indian state of Gujarat.

NextGov reported that Shah was an "active member" of the VHP during the late 1990s, and served on the group's governing council in the 1990s.

A group calling itself a "coalition of concerned Indian-Americans" published an open letter to Shah demanding that she elaborate on her connections to VHP and questioning why she did not publicly disavow VHP's political views earlier.

Shah said that her only connection to the VHP was through earthquake-relief work, and that ties to any such groups were cut by 2001. "Had I been able to foresee the role of the VHP of India in these heinous events, or anticipated that the VHP of America could possibly stand by silently in the face of its Indian counterpart's complicity in the events of Gujarat in 2002 ... I would not have associated with the VHP of America," she said, according to the National Journal.

Shah was so worried about her status on the Obama team that she sent an e-mail to her supporters asking for help, writing that "there is a likely chance they will ask me to resign" because of the unwanted negative publicity.

Months later, however, Shah recalled that she had "great support" from the Obama team and the White House. And by the time of her official appointment in March 2009, the uproar had largely died down.

Shah said that she did not work directly for the VHP during her earthquake-relief efforts, explaining that she served as a fundraising spokesperson for an umbrella coalition that included VHP. "I didn't tell people where to put their money. I just told them to give money," she said. Still, Shah accepted some responsibility for the flap, saying, "Ideally, I should have done my homework."

The Issues

Shah's White House post makes her directly responsible for administration efforts in two principal areas: national service and social innovation.

She said her broader interests, which she hopes to bring to her job, include improving national service programs with an emphasis on using metrics to identify what works and what doesn't. She said the office would also focus on improving public-private partnerships and would serve as "a hub for finding how to do those partnerships well and how agencies can do them better."

Read more

The Network

Shah reports to Melody Barnes, the chair of President Obama's domestic policy council.

Campaign Contributions

Shah was an enthusiastic contributor to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, donating several times for a total of more than $3,000 during the primary and general election. She contributed smaller amounts to Hillary Rodham Clinton during the primary campaign.

Shah previously contributed to the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and to groups like Planned Parenthood and the Center for American Progress, where she worked for a time.

Additional Resources