New Faces at Adhikaar

Adhikaar welcomes two new board members - Susan Hangen and Sukti Dhital. Both Susan and Sukti joined Adhikaar board on July 1, 2009, but they have been actively involved with Adhikaar's work for a long time. Susan was instrumental in carrying out our first community needs assessment, and Sukti has been helping us develop our individual giving.

Susan Hangen. Ph.D. is Associate Professor and Co-Chair of Anthropology and international Studies at Ramapo College, NJ. She has researched and written about ethnic politics in Nepal, and her book The Rise of Ethnic Politics in Nepal: Democracy in the Margins will be published by Routledge in 2009. She served on the executive council of the Association for Nepal and HImalayan Studies from 2005-2009. She is currently researching the Nepali diaspora and has worked with Adhikaar on its research project on the Nepali community in NY. She lives in NYC with her husband Tika Gurung and their daughter Jaya.

Sukti Dhital is currently a Staff Attorney Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, Reproductive Freedom Project. Ms. Dhital provides litigation and policy recommendations on a wide array of women's health matters, including the medical care provided to women in prison and immigration detention. Ms. Dhital's professional experience spans appellate litigation at the firm of Bingham McCutchen LLP, legal advocacy at the Legal Aid Consultancy Center in Kathmandu Nepal and the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. Ms. Dhital has been an active member of South Asian-American progressive organizations, including Adhikaar and SAALT, and was a founding member of SAPA (South Asians for Progressive Action). She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan in 2000 and her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law in 2006. Ms. Dhital was born in Kathmandu, Nepal and remains deeply committed to the issues facing the Nepali community both here and abroad.

We also welcome our summer interns:
Abhinav Adhikary
Saloni Agrawal
Megha Lama