TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

Now in the US, we’re winding down 2023 and many are celebrating the holiday season, but we’re also coming up on an election cycle next year and that means it’s also the season for making choices. Now Indian Americans and South Asian Americans have been making their voices heard more and more in virtually every sector of the American zeitgeist, and definitely in their civic engagement. So within this, it was great to catch up with Krystle Kaul running for US Congress in Virginia’s 10th district, one of only two Indian American women currently running for Congressional seats this year. She’s the granddaughter of Punjabi immigrants to the US, and grew up on Long Island with a very embedded sense of culture, language, and heritage. Through a range of academic achievements and a commitment to service, Krystle is a national security and defense expert, having spent many years in leadership positions in the intelligence and defense community, both in and out of the Pentagon. She speaks eight languages and has traveled extensively, giving her both the ability to connect and develop relationships as well as the thoughtful perspective of empathy and cultural depth, especially in a district and an evolving American electorate where this is incredibly critical for progress. In recent years, she’s served as a teacher at MIT , and also as a small business owner, who assists firms from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds as well as businesses owned by women and veterans. I was able to catch up with her as she continues to campaign with voters and donors, and I asked her to first reflect on how she hopes her story uniquely resonates as a woman running in a Virginia district that’s moderately leaning blue, and increasingly diverse…