Welcome to South Asian Trailblazers! 👋🏼 I’m Simi Shah, and here, I dive deep into the journeys of trailblazing South Asians. Listen to the podcast that inspires this newsletter on Apple, Spotify, or any major podcast platform. +Follow us Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, & TikTok.
📣 The Trailblazers Agency
At South Asian Trailblazers, we’ve long been dedicated to elevating extraordinary leaders. Our new initiative, The Trailblazers Agency, marks the next step toward fulfilling that mission. Our Speaker’s and Brand Partnerships Bureau is bringing the fresh, diverse voices of our trailblazers to main stages around the globe.
If your organization is looking for leaders to speak at your next Summit, Conference, or Event (Diwali is fast approaching!), or to represent you in your next Brand Campaign, get in touch. And of course, if you’re a speaker interested in representation, reach out!
🎞️ Ruchi Bhowmik, VP of Public Policy at Netflix
In this episode, caught up with Ruchi Bhowmik. In her role, she strategizes around the streaming giant’s relationships with key stakeholders: regulators, non-governmental organizations, and elected leaders in the United States and Canada.
Prior to joining Netflix, Ruchi was Global Vice Chair of Public Policy at EY, one of the big four accounting firms. She focused on shaping the firm’s position on regulatory and public policy, with a focus on corporate reporting and ESG, artificial intelligence, data privacy, cybersecurity, and the future of work. She previously served as the Senior Vice President for Global Public Policy and Government Affairs for PepsiCo. Between 2013 and 2017, she served as Chief of Staff to the Global CEO of EY.
Before entering the private sector, Ruchi served in multiple senior-level roles in the United States government, including serving as President Barack Obama’s Deputy Cabinet Secretary and Special Assistant to the President for Policy in the Office of the Chief of Staff. She also served as Legislative Director and Legislative Counsel to Barack Obama when he was a Senator.
Ruchi has served on numerous boards and commissions, including as a member of the G7 Impact Transparency Project, which focused on transparency issues around environmental disclosures as part of COP26. She holds a B.A. in History from Yale University and received her J.D. from the University of Virginia.
Read episode excerpts below (edited for clarity + brevity) 👇🏾
Simi: After graduating from law school, you quickly pivoted into public service, as opposed to staying in big law. What drew you to this work? Can you speak to your time working in the office of Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and eventually President Obama?
Ruchi: I had a wonderful job after law school working for a law firm with people that are still my friends today. And so I was very fortunate and making obviously good money. But I just stopped and looked around and said, “Is this why I went to law school?” It was helping me pay my law school loans, but I realized this isn't what I went to law school for. And so it was the moment when I needed to make a leap.
I first went into public policy at the Brady Center to prevent gun violence. I was a litigator for gun cases. And I realized I liked the policy part. I had the pleasure of working with the Hill and senators who were working on legislation, and that really informed my decision to start looking for jobs on the Hill. I was so fortunate to end up with our current Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, because he had a small team of amazing professionals. That afforded me the opportunity to just take on a massive array of issues. I was able to work on everything housing policy to education policy, to defense, veterans’ affairs, privacy, intelligence, and trade. And it was that exposure that really put me in a position where I was fortunate enough that the folks that were helping the then newly-elected Senator Obama staff up. And so I met with Barack for the first time. I met him and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I've got to get this job.’ We just really hit it off. I also tell people don't work for someone because you think they're going to be president. I worked for him because I thought he was an incredible person and this is gonna be a great experience if I can land it.
Simi: Clearly, your experience working in government served as a training ground for the work that you’ve done pioneering public policy initiatives at EY, PepsiCo, and now Netflix. To this end, what do you think is most misunderstood about private-public collaboration?
Ruchi: That's a great question. When I was on the Hill, you need the private sector to communicate with you. You need to understand, “Okay, you have a factory in my district, what do you guys do? How do you operate?"' No third party is going to be able to tell you that information better than the actual business. That type of relationship is really important — the information exchange. The way we have demonized engagement misses the point. There's stuff that you need to hear from the private sector that will inform what the government is doing. And it's not all sort of now there's going to be bad stories as well. So that's the biggest point I think people misunderstand.
I was on the Hill during Hurricane Katrina, and a lot of really important public-private partnerships in policies were developed, so that in the time of disaster, you can rely on the local businesses to help and then there's a whole process of how to do it. For example, the government doesn't have stockpiles of water. So in Flint, Michigan, in the water crisis, it was companies like PepsiCo that brought water to the community. And so just I think we've oversimplified this, saying that this is bad or this is unacceptable. It really misses how we actually operate as a country.
In this episode, we see how Ruchi's work bridges the public and private sectors from her early days as a staffer on the Hill to her work in corporate America as a pioneer in policy — listen now on Apple, Spotify, and our website!