Indian-American Navy veteran appointed Harris's defence advisor

Shanti Sethi, a trailblazing Indian-American Navy veteran, has joined US Vice President Kamala Harris's office as her executive secretary and defence advisor, according to a media report.

Sethi, the first Indian-American commander of a major US Navy combat ship, recently joined Vice President Harris’ office, Politico news website quoted vice president's senior advisor Herbie Ziskend as saying.

In her new role, Sethi coordinates National Security Advisor documentation across the Office of the Vice President, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Sethi commanded the guided-missile destroyer, USS Decatur, from December 2010 to May 2012. She was also the first female commander of a US naval vessel to visit India.

When she joined the Navy in 1993, the combat exclusion law was still in effect so she was limited in what she could do. However, when she was an officer, the Exclusion Act was lifted.

“I was able to move on to have a career path that was much more open to me because I was going into this very male-dominated environment,” Sethi told USA Today in an interview last year.

Sethi was born in Reno, Nevada. Her mom was born in Canada and became a naturalised US citizen at the age of 12, while her father immigrated to the US from India in the early 1960s, the USA Today report said.

The experience of being in the Navy has taught her not to sell herself short or disguise her ambition, it said.

"You can't be what somebody else thinks you should be," Sethi had said.

"You really have to become comfortable in yourself and say, 'This is who I am, and I can succeed as who I am. I don't have to pretend or try to be someone else.'"

Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant from Chennai, scripted history in 2021 by becoming the first-ever woman Vice President of the United States. The 57-year-old former Senator from California is also the first Black and first South Asian American vice president.

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