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NORTH AMERICAN Newsline APRIL 12, 2024 | The Indian Eye 26

NEWSMAKERS OF THE WEEK

Selected stories about Indian diaspora from our website www.theindianeye.com

NEAL KATYAL JENNIFER RAJKUMAR

Lawyer listed among America’s Assemblywoman features in the

top for 2024 by Forbes City & State Magazine’s list

ccording to the magazine,
What all of this year’s Above
A& Beyond: Women honor-
ees have in common is a passion for
improving New York, the place they
now call home. They are also role
models for the next generation of
politicians, nonprofit leaders, attor-
neys and cultural influencers. That’s
because – whether they work in fields
that have been dominated by women
like nursing or less traditional sectors
like trucking – this cohort is breaking
old boundaries in the C-suite and
racking up myriad firsts.
This year’s featured honoree is
Assembly Member Jenifer Rajku-
mar, the first South Asian woman
elected to state office in New York
– and the only elected official on this
year’s list.
Becoming the first South Asian
woman elected to state office in New
lobal law firm Hogan Lovells partner and former Principal Deputy So- York – she has served in the Assem-
licitor General of the United States, Neal Katyal, and two other Indi-
Gan American lawyers have been named in Forbes’ America’s Top 200 bly since 2021 – was a victory not
only for Rajkumar, but for her par-
Lawyers list for 2024. ents and New York’s burgeoning Asian community. “I represent the district
Katyal is an American appellate lawyer and professor of law. He is a
partner at the Hogan Lovells law firm and is the Paul and Patricia Saunders in south Queens where my family started in America,” she says, “the launch-
ing pad for so many South Asian immigrant families like mine.”
Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University Law Center. Mindful of her responsibility, Rajkumar led a successful effort to make
This series profiles some of the top practitioners in the profession -- law-
yers with stellar track records in their areas of focus, those who have broken Diwali a state school holiday and to establish New York’s Asian American
and Pacific Islander Commission. She also sponsored a measure incorporat-
barriers to emerge as leaders in their fields, and attorneys most respected by ing domestic workers – who are overwhelmingly immigrants of color – into
peers and clients. According to Forbes, the elite lawyers on this list were se- the state’s human rights law.
lected through a rigorous, multi-stage process of researching, evaluating and A politician since middle school, Rajkumar got her start leading a vot-
rating thousands of candidates, conducted by an editorial team with broad ing rights campaign to enfranchise fifth-graders. When she got her driver’s
experience in law practice and the legal marketplace.
license at 17, she drove straight to Hillary Clinton’s U.S. Senate campaign
office to volunteer.
Forbes notes that Katyal has argued 50 cases before the US. Su- Later, as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Rajkumar led a
preme Court, detailing his extensive experience constitutional campus women’s group and tutored low-income Philadelphia women. Be-
lieving that “lawyers save the world,” she earned a degree from Stanford Law
law and litigation. Included in the profile is Katyal’s role as the School – then won her first case as an attorney, a workplace discrimination

Special Prosecutor for the State of Minnesota in the murder of suit on behalf of 5,000 women. “I realized that to really make a difference,
you need power,” Rajkumar says. “So I went into politics.”
George Floyd. Her first role was as a lower Manhattan district leader. After three
terms, Rajkumar expanded her sphere of influence as then-Gov. Andrew
Additionally, the feature underscores Katyal’s monumental win in a case Cuomo’s state director of immigrant affairs, spearheading a first-in-the-
upholding the constitutionality of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, as well as win- nation, $31 million public-private partnership to provide immigrants with
ning another landmark voting rights-related case in 2023 when the Court legal defense.
rejected the “independent state legislature theory” in a North Carolina ger-
rymandering case. Continued on next page... >>

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