Meet Anjali Sud, Sanjay Seth, two Indian-Americans elected to top Harvard boards amid row with Trump

Anjali Sud and Sanjay Seth, ii Indian-Americans, feature late been elected to john harvard University’s room of Overseers and Harvard Alumni Association, respectively.

The Board of Overseers, which Anjali Sud will be joining for a two-year-term, was established in 1642. It is Harvard’s second-highest governing body, which advises the school on academic programmes and policy, according to harvard.edu.

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Anjali Sud will be replacing Canadian prime minister and Bank of England former governor Mark Carney, who resigned after assuming leadership of Canada’s Liberal Party.

The HAA Board, where Sanjay Seth will serve, focuses on enhancing alumni engagement, community-building, and volunteer leadership across Harvard’s global alumni network.

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The appointments come amid Harvard University and US President Donald Trump clashing over the school's foreign student enrollments, after the administration threatened to revoke their SEVP certification.

Anjali Sud was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1983 to Punjabi immigrant parents and raised in Flint. She earned her undergraduate degree in finance and management from the University of Pennsylvania and went on to receive her MBA from Harvard Business School in 2011.

Sud has worked for Amazon, Time Warner and was the Vice President of Global Marketing for Vimeo in 2012. She eventually became the CEO of the company as well.

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In 2023, she took over as CEO of Tubi, a new free streaming service with nearly 100 million monthly active users. Apart from her business interests, she also serves as the board chair for Change.org, an online petitioning platform.

She told Harvard's website, “My parents came to this country to give me a shot at the American Dream. I achieved that dream through the power of a transformative education, and I want to pay it forward for the next generation."

She added, "Harvard has both the opportunity and imperative to define the future of higher education at a time of existential change. I would be honored to help Harvard navigate that change and enable creative transformation.”

Sanjay Seth, is an Indian-American climate and sustainability expert, who has been elected as one of the new directors of the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA). His three-year term will commence on 1 July 2025.

Seth was born in Australia and holds dual master's degrees from Harvard - an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government and a Master’s in Urban Planning from the Graduate School of Design, both earned in 2019. 

Sanjay Seth completed his undergraduate studies at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Seth has served as Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor for Climate and Equity at the US Environmental Protection Agency’s New England office. Prior to that, he worked as Climate Resilience Program Manager for Boston city and contributed to climate resilience efforts in New York City.

At Harvard, he also co-founded the Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment group and was a fellow with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. 

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