Neha's story begins in New Delhi, India, but her journey spans continents and cultures. Her family is from the Himalayas but migration due to economic opportunities meant she lived in multiple countries and cities, always adapting to change.

From her father, a software engineer, Neha discovered technology's ability to simplify, connect and empower. From her mother, an educator, she learned patience and persistence.

Living in India and abroad exposed Neha to issues of social inequities and injustice, especially around gender based discrimination and violence. As a curious eldest daughter, her experiences ignited her passion for creating systems that represent and work for everyone. Her curiosity helped her make new friends and build community anywhere she lived.

Through hard work, she was accepted to liberal arts college Mount Holyoke College and received generous scholarships, and financial aid. Even though her parents were apprehensive to send their daughter alone and by herself to a foreign country, Neha convinced them this would be the education to launch her life. At college, she studied International Policy and Economics, and also worked campus jobs all four years.

Four years later, she would once again receive academic scholarships to get an MBA from George Washington University. She focused her studies on economic development through social entrepreneurship and community investments.

The cost of higher education in the US always stunned her, especially coming from India - her parents had to partially dip into their retirement funds to pay for her education. Neha recognized she was lucky and privileged to receive these scholarships and opportunity to learn. This laid the foundation for her to always choose hard work and greater public service..so she might pay it forward in the future.

Neha navigated the complicated U.S. immigration systems to secure an H1-B visa to work legally in the U.S. Neha’s childhood dream was to be a journalist, but after college, she decided she should use her opportunity to study and work in the U.S. to learn how the world’s largest democracy works.

She applied to hundreds of jobs, with odds against her as a foreign citizen in the 2008 job market because she needed a visa sponsorship. She slept on friends’ couches till she got a full-time job. She stayed focused, and got hired with an employer-sponsored work visa to work in federal legislation and regulatory policy covering issues from senior care, grid modernization, cybersecurity, and broadband access for over 4 years.

Realizing her career growth in D.C. would always be limited because she was not a U.S. citizen, she pivoted careers to understand innovation and entrepreneurship in San Francisco. All of these experiences helped her get first-hand experience in the processes that help take an idea to make it real. At the same time, she once again had to go through the stress of the H1-B lottery system, and experience all too familiar immigrant struggles of personal sacrifices due to fear of job loss.

In 2018, Neha became a naturalized U.S. citizen. This sense of security after over a decade of navigating instability as a non-immigrant visa holder allowed her to lean in further into the community. She took some risks and leaps of faith to contribute to her community.

She became a published bilingual Hindi-English children’s book author; she founded a tech startup focused on improving intergenerational relationships using snail mail. And she multiplied her local activism to speak up for the Black Lives Matter movement, call for police accountability, for stricter gun regulations, speak up against Asian hate during COVID, educate around the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and ongoing voter suppression around the country; and most recently vocally protest of the U.S. funding of the Gaza genocide. Even though she would often be the one of the few in her friends’ circle speaking up, she chose being brave over being popular. Neha always believed that safety would not be found in silence. She believed she was safe and had rights as a U.S. citizen, but also saw the increasing censorship and consequences of activism on specific topics challenging establishment power structures.

The start of 2026 shook Neha out of her sense of safety in the American dream.

• Witnessing ICE deployment in major cities and the multiple, unjustified yet completely unapologetic murders of U.S. citizens by ICE agents enraged her. She saw people in District 3 and around Austin impacted by the environment of fear, and was shocked by the limited local government action to protect.

• Tech layoffs also hit close to home for her, and she saw more people in her community impacted by job loss, with no clear path for re-skilling, or even community protections. The same tech companies that had promised jobs and prosperity were not being held accountable for causing these seismic changes.

• Finally, she witnessed the uncritically welcoming policy proposals for increasing investments in war-tech and AI data centers at the cost of environmental protections. Neha was a student of economic development. She grew up in countries that had sacrificed human rights for profits, with irreversible damage. This was not going to happen in her current home, her chosen home. The people in Austin deserve better.

Something had to change. Her decade of working on voter activation in Texas had convinced her — change begins locally. And thus the seeds for this campaign were laid.