Meenakshi Ahamed is a freelance journalist and the author of A Matter of Trust: India–U.S. Relations from Truman to Trump a sweeping narrative history of the turbulent seventy-year relationship between the two countries. Her writing has been published in the New York Times Washington Post Atlantic CNN Wall Street Journal Seminar and Asian Age. She has worked at the World Bank in Washington D.C. and for New Delhi Television and has served on the boards of Doctors Without Borders Drugs for Neglected Diseases and Vellore Christian Medical College Foundation. Ahamed was born in Calcutta and received an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She divides her time between New York Los Angeles and New Delhi.
<p>It is virtually impossible to turn on CNN read the Wall Street Journal go to a hospital attend a university or browse a bookstore without encountering a sea of Indian names and faces. In her new book INDIAN GENIUS: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America (Harper360; February 28 2025) author and journalist Meenakshi Ahamed provides fascinating portraits of the Indian Americans at the forefront of the wave of Indian success stories.</p><p>Ahamed’s brilliant portraits of such well-known figures as Satya Nadella Vinod Khosla Shantanu Narayen Chandrika Tandon Nikesh Arora Siddhartha Mukherjee Deepak Chopra Nikki Haley and Fareed Zakaria populate the pages of her book. Based on a series of interviews and full of fresh and surprising stories INDIAN GENIUS reveals the private strengths that made possible each individual’s public achievements.</p><p>What accounts for Indian Americans’ remarkable ability to break into mainstream American culture and their meteoric rise within its ranks? Other immigrant groups have found success in the U.S. but none have rocketed so far and so fast reaching heights in a single generation that have taken other groups the better part of a century to achieve. In INDIAN GENIUS Ahamed focuses on three areas where Indian Americans have had a singular impact: tech medicine and public policy.</p><p>The per capita income of Indian Americans far exceeds that of any ethnic group. According to a 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center the median annual household income for Indian Americans is $100000 higher than other Asian Americans ($75000) and the general population ($53600). Indians were also the most highly educated; 72 percent are college graduates compared to 51 percent of other Asians and 30 percent of the rest of the population.</p>
