- Bobby Jindal
Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is a Louisiana politician. Jindal was elected as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives on November 2, 2004, from Louisiana's First Congressional District (map), based in the suburbs of New Orleans. He was re-elected to Congress in the 2006 election with 88 percent of the vote in the 1st district. He intends to be a candidate for Governor of Louisiana in the October 20, 2007 election.
- Sunita Williams
Sunita Lyn "Suni" Williams (born September 19 1965 in Euclid, Ohio) is a United States Naval officer and a NASA astronaut. She was assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 14 and then joined Expedition 15. Williams is the second woman of Indian heritage to have been selected by NASA for a space mission after Kalpana Chawla and the second astronaut of Slovenian heritage after Ronald M. Sega.
- Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri Vourvoulias is a contemporary Indian American author based in New York City.
- Sanjaya Malakar
Sanjaya Joseph Malakar (born Sanjaya Shekar Malakar on September 10 1989) was a finalist on the sixth season of "American Idol". Malakar gained national attention on "American Idol" advancing to 7th place with public votes, despite being badly received by the show's judges, particularly Simon Cowell.
- Jayant Patel
Jayant Mukundray Patel (born April 10, 1950) is a surgeon who found himself at the centre of a scandal in early 2005 when he was accused of gross incompetence while working at Bundaberg Base Hospital in Queensland, Australia. He has been nicknamed "Doctor Death" in Australian media, particularly newspapers such as News Ltd's "The Courier-Mail".
- Kalpana Chawla
Kalpana Chawla (Punjabi:ਕਲਪਨਾ ਚਾਵਲਾ) (7 March 1962 – 1 February 2003), was an Indian-born American astronaut and space shuttle mission specialist. She was one of seven crewmembers lost aboard Space Shuttle Columbia during mission STS-107 when the shuttle disintegrated upon reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Kalpana Chawla is a posthumous recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
- Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar is an American poet. He was born in 1975 and raised in Manassas, VA. He is the poet-in-residence at Central Connecticut State University and the founding editor of the online journal of the arts, "Drunken Boat". His first book, "Instrumentality", was published by Cherry Grove in May 2004, and was a finalist for the 2005 Connecticut Book Awards. He co-wrote "Wanton Textiles" (No Tell Books, 2006) with Reb Livingston, …
- Deepak Chopra
Deepak Chopra is an Indian medical doctor and writer. He has written extensively on spirituality and diverse topics in mind-body medicine. He claims to be influenced by the teachings of Vedanta and the Bhagavad Gita from his native India, and quantum physics. He also said that he has been profoundly influenced by the teachings of J Krishnamurti.
- M. Night Shyamalan
Manoj Nelliattu Shyamalan (born August 6, 1970), known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, // ("SHAH-ma-lawn"), is an American actor, Academy Award-nominated film writer, and director.
- Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla (born January 28, 1955 in Poona) is an Indian-American venture capitalist. He is an influential personality in Silicon Valley. He was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems and became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in 1986.
- Madhuri Dixit
Madhuri Dixit (born as Madhuri Shankar Dixit to a Marathi Chitpavan Brahmin family on May 15, 1967) is an award winning Indian Bollywood actress. She is a native of Mumbai, India. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, she dominated Hindi cinema as a leading actress, appearing in many hit films. She is considered to be an icon of the Bollywood film industry.
- Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Zakaria (born January 20 1964, Mumbai, India) is a journalist, columnist, author, editor, commentator, and television host specializing in international relations and foreign affairs. He was named Editor of "Newsweek International" in October 2000. He writes a weekly foreign affairs column for "Newsweek", which appears fortnightly in the Washington Post.
- S. R. Sidarth
Shekar Ramanuja "S.R." Sidarth (born 1985) is an Indian American and resident of the U.S. state of Virginia, where he was born and raised. His volunteer work for the Senate campaign of Democrat Jim Webb placed him at the center of a controversy over the use of a racial slur on him by Webb's opponent, Republican Senator George Allen, in August 2006.
- Dalip Singh Saund
Dalip Singh Saund was a member of the United States House of Representatives. He served the 29th district of the state of California from January 3, 1957–January 3, 1963. He was the first Asian American, Indian American and Sikh member of the US Congress. Born in Chhajulwadi, Punjab, India, to a Sikh family of Tarkhan origins, he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Punjab in 1919.
- Sanjay Gupta
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is a first generation Indian-American physician and a contributing CNN senior health correspondent based in Atlanta, Georgia. An Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at Emory University and associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, he is also a frequent guest on the news program "Anderson Cooper 360°". "Charity Hospital", a news report he filed for "Anderson Cooper 360°", …
- Anand Jon
Anand Jon (b. 1974) is an Indian-born fashion designer. He has appeared on "America's Next Top Model".
- Manick Sorcar
Manick Sorcar (formal name "Prafulla Chandra "P.C." Sorcar") is an Indian American artist, engineer, and entrepreneur based in Denver, Colorado, USA. Sorcar is an award-winning artist in various media, including fine arts, cartoons, animations, and world-touring stage shows with live action mixed with laser animation. His animated films, all based on children's stories from India, have won prestigious awards at international film festivals.
- Suketu Mehta
Suketu Mehta (born 1963) is an acclaimed writer based in New York City. He was born in Calcutta, India, and raised in Mumbai where he lived until his family moved to the New York area in 1977. His autobiographical account of his experiences with the city of Mumbai, "Maximum City," was published in 2004. The book explores the underbelly of the sprawling city. It was a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
- Madhur Jaffrey
Madhur Jaffrey is an Indian actress, who has also found fame as a food writer, introducing the Western world to the many cuisines of India.
- Kaavya Viswanathan
Kaavya Viswanathan (born January 16, 1987) is an Indian-American undergraduate student at Harvard College. She came to public attention when her debut novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life", was revealed to have been plagiarized from multiple sources. She was born in Chennai, India, and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, and later in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, United States.
- Kiran Desai
Kiran Desai (born 3 September 1971) is an Indian author who is a citizen of India and a Permanent Resident of the United States. Her novel "The Inheritance of Loss" won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. She is the daughter of the noted author Anita Desai.
- Zakir Hussain
Ustad Zakir Hussain, born March 9, 1951, son of tabla player Ustad Alla Rakha, is a well known classical tabla player in India. He has also won awards and recognitions for his contribution to the world of music.
- Deepak Pandya
Deepak Pandya (born December 6, 1932) is a neuroanatomist who is best known for his contributions to our understanding of cortical and subcortical brain connectivity in the macaque using tract-tracing methods. He was born at Julasan, Mehsana District Gujarat in India. He was orphaned, but completed his I.S. in 1953 from Gujarat University in India. After obtaining his M.D. degree from Gujarat University in 1957 (and interning in V.S. Hospital in Junagadh till 1958), …
- Prakash Amritraj
Prakash Amritraj (born October 2, 1983, Los Angeles, California, USA) is a professional tennis player. He turned professional in 2003 after winning the National Championships at the University of Southern California. He is the son of Vijay Amritraj and the cousin of Stephen Amritraj. He is a non-resident Indian who represents India in tournaments and the Davis Cup. He played tennis for the University of Southern California where he majored in business.
- Amitav Ghosh
Amitav Ghosh (born 1956 in Calcutta), is an Indian-Bengali author known for his work in the English language. He was educated at the Doon School (where he was a younger contemporary of Vikram Seth), St. Stephen's College, Delhi, Delhi University and Oxford University, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in social anthropology. Ghosh lives in New York with his wife, Deborah Baker, author of "In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding" (1993) and a senior editor at Little, …
- Norah Jones
Norah Jones (born Geethali Norah Jones Shankar on March 30 1979 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and occasional actress. Jones's career was launched with the massive success of her 2002 debut album "Come Away with Me", a contemporary pop album with a sensual, plaintive soul/folk/country tinge, that sold over twenty million copies worldwide and received six Grammy Awards, with Jones winning "Best New Artist".
- Bharati Mukherjee
Bharati Mukherjee (b. 1940) was born in Calcutta and moved to Britain with family in the year of Independence. She did her graduation from the Universities of Calcutta and Baroda, and later from the University of Iowa after she moved to USA in 1961.
- Rajat Gupta
Rajat Kumar Gupta is the current special advisor on management reforms to the Secretary-General of the United Nation. He is also an independent director at Goldman Sachs and is a member of the board of trustees of the University of Chicago.
- Dinesh D'Souza
Dinesh D'Souza (born April 25, 1961 in Bombay, India) is an author and the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. D'Souza is the author of numerous "New York Times" best selling books and one of the most prolific and prominent conservative writers and speakers in the United States.
- Anita Desai
Born to a German mother and an Indian father on June 24, 1937, Anita Desai spent much of her life in New Delhi. Growing up she spoke German at home and Hindi to friends and neighbors. She first learned English when she went to school. It was the language in which she first learned to read and write, and so it became her literary language.
- Kris Kolluri
Kris Kolluri, son of Raman Kolluri, was sworn into office as Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) on March 13, 2006. He spent one day, December 28, 2006 as acting Governor. Prior to that, Kolluri specialized in redevelopment and transportation law as an attorney at Parker McCay of Marlton. Kolluri was Chief of Staff to New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Jack Lettiere.
- Swati Dandekar
She has served in the Iowa House of Representatives since November of 2002 where she is a member of the Appropriations, Economic Growth, Education, International Relations and Economic Development Committees. She has been the recipient of many awards including the Asian Alliance "Person of the Year" award in 2003 and the J.C. Peney Education Golden Rule Award in 2000. Ms. Dandekar attended high school at the J.N. Tata Parsi School in Nagpur, India where she graduated in 1968.
- Amitava Kumar
He is the author of Husband of a Fanatic (The New Press, 2005 and Penguin-India, 2004), Bombay-London-New York (Routledge and Penguin-India, 2002), and Passport Photos (University of California Press and Penguin-India, 2000). He has also written a book of poems, No Tears for the N.R.I. (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1996). The novel Home Products was published in early 2007 by Picador-India.
- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was born in 1957 in Calcutta, India. One of her first memories is that of her grandfather telling her the stories from Ramayan and Mahabharat, ancient Indian epics. She quickly noticed that "interestingly, unlike the male heroes, the main relationships [the] women had were with the opposite sex-with their husbands, sons, lovers, or opponents. They never had any important women friends."
- Sabeer Bhatia
Sabeer Bhatia is a co-founder of Hotmail and an entrepreneur.
- Rudresh Mahanthappa
Rudresh Mahanthappa is a New York based saxophonist and composer. He is a frequent collaborator of pianist Vijay Iyer.
- Zubin Mehta
Zubin Mehta (b. April 29, 1936) is an Indian conductor of classical music. Zubin Mehta was born into an aristocratic Indian Parsi family in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, the son of Mehli and Tehmina Mehta. His father Mehli Mehta was a violinist and founding conductor of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Zubin is an alumnus of St Mary's School (I.C.S.E.), Mazagoan, Mumbai.
- Aasif Mandvi
Aasif Mandvi (born March 5 1966, Mumbai, India, formerly Bombay) is an Indian American actor. He began appearing as an occasional correspondent on "The Daily Show" on August 9 2006. On March 12, 2007, he was promoted to a regular correspondent. Mandvi played the title role in Merchant Ivory Productions' film "The Mystic Masseur" and is also the recipient of an Obie Award for his critically acclaimed one-man show "Sakina's Restaurant".
- Amar Bose
Amar Gopal Bose is the chairman and founder of Bose Corporation. A Bengali Indian American electrical engineer, he was listed on the 2006 Forbes 400 with a net worth of $1.5 billion. Bose was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; his father, Nani Gopal Bose, was an Indian freedom revolutionary from Bengal who having been imprisoned for his political activities, …
- Mindy Kaling
She mentioned about being given a nickname after the character on the TV series Mork and Mindy. She talked about growing up Indian and having to take roles of one, which was a bit difficult for her since she was actually born in the States. She talked about her audition for Baby Mama where she felt she sounded like Apu from The Simpsons and proceeds to speak her lines. Her scene was cut from the movie.