New Delhi: Indians are excelling in every field, business, engineering, medicine, films, media, and academics. Many Indians have made a mark across the globe. They are being recognized at various international platforms. Women are also not left behind. Here's a list of 10 American Indian women who have gone places and left achieved laurels: 1. Sunita WilliamsA NASA astronaut, Sunita holds the record for longest single space flight by a woman. She was born to Indian American neuroanatomist Deepak Pandya. Her native place is Gujarat. Williams has made seven spacewalks totaling 50 hours and 40 minutes,putting Williams in No. 5 on the list of most experienced spacewalkers. 2. Indra NooyiShe is the Chairperson of beverage and food company PepsiCo. According to Forbes Nooyi, ranks 10th among the list of 100 most powerful women of the world. 3.Nikki HaleyNimrata Nikki Randhawa Haley, she is the youngest Governor in US. Currently, she is the Governor of South Carolina. She is the first woman to become the Governor of US and also the third person of color elected as governor of a Southern state, after Virginia's L. Douglas Wilder and Louisiana's Jindal. She was born to an Indian Sikh family and hails from Amritsar, Punjab. 4. Kamala HarrisShe is the current Attorney General of California. She has an Indian- Jamaican descent. She is the daughter of an Indian mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer specialist who immigrated from Chennai, India, to the United States in 1960 and a Jamaican American father, Stanford University economics professor Donald Harris.She is the first female African Americana and Asian American Attorney General in California. 5. Kiran DesaiAn author and winner of 2006 Booker Prize, Kiran was born to Anita Desai who was herself a novelist. She was born in Chandigarh and spent some years in Pune and Mumbai, she left India at the age of 14 and moved to United States. 6. Anoushka ShankarShe is the daughter of Sitar player Ravi Shankar. She was born in London to a Bengali-Tamil Hindu family. After graduating from California, she decided to pursue a full time career in music rather than continuing her education. From then onwards, she started performing all over the world with her father. 7. Deepa MehtaAn Indo Canadian filmmaker, Deepa hails from Amritsar. After completing graduation in India, deepa started making documentaries and worked with Canadian documentarian Paul Saltzman, who was in India making a film and whom she was to later marry and migrate with to Canada in 1973. She has been in controversies for her element triology films. She is a keen explorer of Indian cultural taboos and customs and portrays them in her films too. She has achieved numerous awards for her films. 8. Padma LakshmiPadma Parvati Lakshmi, Indian- American cook book author, T.V host , model and actress, writer to ambassador for the United Nations Development Fund for Women. She was born in Chennai and spent most of her time in US. 9. Norah JonesNorah Jones is a popular American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actress. She is the daughter of Pandit Ravi Shankar and paternal half-sister of Anoushka Shankar. 10. Shefali Razdan DuggalShe is the top Indian-American fundraiser at President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, has been conferred with the "Most Powerful and Influential Women of California" award.Originally from India, Shefali, a mother of two, has been raised in Cincinnati, Chicago, New York and Boston and received an MA in Political Communication from New York University and a BS in Mass Communication from Miami University.Duggal worked as a political analyst at Staton Hughes, a political strategy firm, and also worked for Senators Ted Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein.11. Nisha DesaiNisha Desai Biswal is the first Indian- American to become the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs. She is the first woman to head South Asia Bureau.Earlier, Biswal was assistant administrator for Asia at the US Agency for International Development in the Obama administration.Biswal is a second-generation immigrant, as her parents were from India.12. Gargee GhoshGargee Ghosh is the Director of Policy Analysis and Financing (PAF) at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. US President Barack Obama has appointed her to a key administration post. She is an expert on development policy and financing.Ghosh has also held roles in global health and international economics with the Gates Foundation from 2004 to 2009. Previously, she was a Senior Expert in the international development practice at McKinsey & Company, and also worked at Google and the Center for Global Development. She is a member of the advisory board of the University of California San Francisco's Global Health Group. Ghosh received a BA from the University of Victoria, an MSc in Economics from the University of Oxford and an MSc in International Relations from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
