Preeta D. Bansal
From 2003-2009 Ms. Bansal served as a commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan independent federal agency to which she was appointed by the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and elected Chair in 2004-2005. She is the only Hindu who has served on the Commission.
She is a senior executive whose high-profile career has been at the intersection of global business, law, diplomacy, public policy, and federal and state government – often in entrepreneurial, operational, and management roles. Currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, she has served as the Global General Counsel for Litigation and Regulatory Affairs at HSBC Holdings plc in London, in senior roles in the Obama and Clinton White Houses, as the Solicitor General of the State of New York, as a partner and practice chair at the major international law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, and as Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. A top graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard-Radcliffe College and a former law clerk to a U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1990-1991), she has been profiled by The New York Times as a “poised and playful” “superstar” -- a “nimble, unorthodox thinker interested in art and literature, [who] was attracted to the law’s blend of the philosophical and the pragmatic.” The New York Law Journal referred to her as “one of the most gifted lawyers of her generation, who combines a brilliant analytical mind with solid, mature judgment.” Ms. Bansal is committed to meditation and Vedanta/Buddhist philosophy, and writes and speaks about the potential impact of Eastern philosophy on western management practices.
From 2003-2009, while a partner in private law practice, Ms. Bansal served as a commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan independent federal agency to which she was appointed by the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and elected Chair in 2004-2005. She is the only Hindu who has served on the Commission. She led or participated in United States diplomatic missions to Afghanistan, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, China, Russia, Vietnam, Turkey, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to advance foreign policy concerns, and advised on the drafting of the Iraqi and Afghan constitutions. She published op-eds in the New York Times, Washington Post, Asia Times and Dallas Morning News, and appeared regularly on evening network news programs, National Public Radio, CNN and other national and international media outlets.
Ms. Bansal is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House. She has served on several nonprofit boards including as a commissioner on New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s bipartisan Election Modernization Task Force, as an Advisory Committee member of the Clinton Global Initiative, and as a Board Member of the International Center for Research on Women, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the National Women’s Law Center. In 2006-2007, she was a co-chair of then-Attorney General-elect Andrew Cuomo’s transition team, and she served on the National Finance Committee and senior policy committee (focusing on immigration policy and on foreign policy/Asia) of the Obama presidential campaign in 2008. She was also a faith advisor to the Obama presidential campaign, and spoke on the faith panel of the Democratic National Convention in 2008.
