US President-elect Joe Biden has been building his administration and working to assume the office with the packed policies and governance as he trajects towards returning to the White House from being a Vice-President to the 46th President of the United States. He has been giving a place for pluralism and diversity in his administration and now he has appointed another Indian American to a key post in First Lady's office. 

Joe Biden has appointed Indian-American Mala Adiga as the policy director of his wife Jill Biden. The appointment has become a crucial one as the incoming First Lady has keenly been eyeing to focus on education and plans to continue teaching community college classes. According to reports, Adiga will be working for a First Lady who has said she intends to prioritize education and military families. 

Adiga has vast and strong experience in education and building educational policies. She was a senior adviser to Jill Biden and senior policy adviser for Biden's 2020 campaign. She had previously worked as the director at the Biden Foundation for higher education and military families. 

Before getting into Biden Foundation, Adiga was deputy assistant secretary of state for academic programmes at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs during Obama's administration and she also had worked in the State Department's Office of Global Women's Issues as Chief of Staff and senior adviser to the ambassador-at-large. Adiga would become one of the significant picks by Joe Biden in his administration. 

Adiga had served as Director for Human Rights in the National Security Staff's Multilateral and Human Rights Directorate. Before joining the National Security Staff, she had served as the counsel to the Associate Attorney General in the Justice Department. Before entering the government service, Adiga had volunteered and worked for the Obama Presidential campaign for two years. 

Mala Adiga has roots in Udupi, Karnataka. Her family is credited with establishing Karnataka Bank, one of the growing private banks in India. Mala's father Dr. Ramesh Adiga had migrated to the United States when he was 24 and Mala was born in Illinois. She graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa with a BA in Spanish and she had earned her JD from the University of Chicago Law School and her MPH from the University of Minnesota. 

Biden had announced her appointment as the President-elect has been building his administration and her appointment has come when Biden had put out another round of announcements to fill some of the top posts in his federal and executive offices. Last week, Biden has announced his long time aide Ron Klain as his Chief of Staff at the White House. 

Earlier, Biden has formed his COVID-19 response team to counter the spread of the pandemic in the United States. He had inducted well-known doctors and technicians to work on mitigating the spread. His team has two Indian-Americans - one is Dr.Vivek Murthy, who was the US Surgeon General under President Obama, and the other is Dr. Celine Gounder, who is a native of Tamil Nadu and an infectious disease physician.