Kamala and Rohini - The Indo - Lankan combo in the US Vice President’s Office

Kamala Devi Harris, born to a Jamaican Economist and an Indian Tamil cancer researcher, became the first female vice president, the highest-ranking female elected official in U.S. history, and the first African American and first Asian American vice president.

A member of the Democratic Party, she served as a United States senator from California from 2017 to 2021, and as the attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017.  Harris became vice president upon inauguration alongside President Joe Biden, having defeated the incumbent president, Donald Trump, and vice president, Mike Pence, in the 2020 election.

Kamala Harris’ Domestic Policy Advisor is Rohini Kosoglu, daughter of a medical doctor of Sri Lankan Tamil origin. This is the first Indo-Lankan-American combo in the history of the White House.

"Serving as my domestic policy adviser will be Rohini Kosoglu, who is not only an expert on some of the most important issues facing the American people, but also one of my closest and most trusted aides from the Senate and presidential campaign," Harris said in a statement few weeks ago.

Sri Lankan-American Kosoglu, whose parents, Dr. Wijeyadevendram Ravindran and Shobhana Ravindran hail from Jaffna, Sri Lanka, played a crucial part in Vice President’s national political career, serving as a senior adviser to Ms Harris since 2017.

Kosoglu has been working as a senior adviser to Ms. Harris during the transition and in the Biden-Harris campaign. She previously served as Ms. Harris’s chief of staff in her Senate office.

As a senior adviser in the election campaign, Kosoglu managed and oversaw debate preparation, policy, communications, and operations for a team with over three-hundred staff with a $40 million budget, according to her biography on the Harvard University Kennedy School, where she is a resident fellow at the Institute of Politics.

Rohini was the first South Asian woman to serve as Chief of Staff to a U.S. Senator and was notably the only Asian American to serve in that role during her tenure. Under her leadership, Kosoglu held a commitment to creating a diverse and representative staff by developing a talent pipeline that led to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies naming Harris' office as the most diverse on Capitol Hill.

Kosoglu's career on Capitol Hill has also included leadership positions with leading Democratic Senators, including U.S. Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) and U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). During her tenure, Kosoglu led negotiations on numerous bipartisan legislation, with a focus on the economy and health care. Most notably, Kosoglu served as a key advisor during the drafting and passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

Kosoglu has received numerous awards for her legislative accomplishments, including the Rising Star Award from the Women's Campaign Forum and organizations such as Pew Charitable Trust, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and the National Rural Health Association. She has also been a featured speaker for the Democratic National Committee, the National Education Association, and Kauffman Center for Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship. In 2020, Kosoglu served as a Resident Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School leading a weekly discussion on navigating careers in political campaigns and Capitol Hill.

Originally from New Jersey, Kosoglu is a graduate of the University of Michigan and George Washington University and is a mother to three young children.