Anju Bhargava, a management consultant, was a member of President Barack Obama's inaugural Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnership.
Work
She began her career as a banker and has held senior level positions in Corporate America, focusing on global business transformation, organizational development and risk management. Her research a super-regional bank’s Loan loss experience was published by The RMA Journal, and received recognition from the Office of the Comptroller of Currency. She worked with Rutgers Business School, as a Fellow of Department of Accounting, Business Ethics and Information Systems to frame thoughts on current risk assurance and Enterprise Risk Management issues. Ms Bhargava has consulted for global companies in diverse industries, coached and mentored talent and provided thought leadership in the public and private sectors. She has held senior positions at Bank of America, Bear Stearns, BB&T Bank, IBM Global Services, Fleet/NatWest Bank and Chase Manhattan Bank. She has developed an Executive Education program, Chakravyuhu or the labyrinth, a program for mentoring women to make the "step-change" in their careers in the global Corporate World. She has taught Organization Management at Rutgers Graduate School of Business. Shortly after her appointment to the President's Inaugural Advisory Council in April 2009, Bhargava founded a progressive American organization advancing seva, interfaith collaboration, pluralism, social justice and sustainable civic engagement to ignite grassroots social change and build healthy communities. As the only member of eastern tradition in the Council, she brought to the White House more awareness of the issues facing the Dharmic community and the New Americans, the post 1965 immigrants. She saw a need for greater integration of America’s cultural and religious diversity and leveraging their skills to strengthen America domestically and globally. Hence, along with the Council recommendations, with the HASC team, she authored a comprehensive community assessment report and presented it to the President and Senior Administration officials. This became a strategic and visionary road map for integration of the Hindu community to make service and volunteering a defining part of Hindu/Dharmic American life and culture. The overall goal is to increase civic engagement, to increase and promote volunteering and interfaith collaboration while addressing the nation's needs. She developed tools for faith-based, inculture, approach to development for the Hindu/Dharmic community to serve such as . This approach has received widespread support from key , including the Dalai Lama, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Amma, ISKCON, Chinmaya Mission and others. Bhargava played a key role in co-hosting 3 historic conferences with the White House: ”, ". Bhargava is currently on the board of trustees of: 1. , and 2. Bhargava serves on the Department of Homeland Security’s Faith-based Advisory Council and assists the . Bhargava blogs frequently for Huffingtonpost and Washingtonpost. She is a frequent speaker at many forums, including The Conference Board, Universities, Corporations, .
Prior Community Building Experience
Bhargava was the only Indian-American to serve in the Community Builder Fellowship, President Clinton’s White House initiative. During this time, she conducted the 1st study of Asian American immigrants needs in New Jersey which became the foundation for many government and community organizations programs. She was an advisor to Community Foundation NJ which brought diverse parents in Elizabeth and Jersey City together to breakdown cultural barriers. She educated diverse communities on HUD programs and worked to identify ways to empower communities, increase affordable housing and homeownership, reduce homelessness, promote jobs and economic opportunity and fight for fair housing. She was recognized by the Partnership for New Jersey and Governor Whitman as a founder of New Jersey Diversity Network. Anju Bhargava attended the 1st briefing of Asian Women in 1983, President Reagan's White House initiative. With Asian Indian Women in America and the City of New York, Bhargava played a key role in co-organizing the 1st job fair for underserved communities in 1986. She advised Livingston Township, Board of Education, Clergy in developing diversity and inclusion strategies to integrate global, multicultural residents while enhancing the Township’s image and resulting property values. She has organized community-based affinity groups and has created a language and cultural education infrastructure to facilitate adaptation and integration. In 2006, she initiated Utsava, the 1st Festival of India in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, an event linked with Winston-Salem's strategic direction to revitalize downtown and enhance bio-scienceworkforce development, and with North Carolina's global education vision and goals for school children. The Indian community provided an inculture, first hand, global education to the people of Winston-Salem; the world in America. She was a founding member of NJ Corporate Diversity Network, an initiative formed with Partnership for New Jersey to "maximize effectiveness of diversity initiatives to enhance business results and positively affect our communities and the economy".
Awards
Bhargava has received at least two awards for her work in various fields. In 2012 Bhargava was recognized by the for her pioneering and community transformation work. Bhargava was named one of by Huffington Post..
