Climate Expert Bidisha Bhattacharyya Gets Key Post in U.S. Agriculture Department
- The Indian American is appointed as Senior Policy Advisor in the Farm Service Agency.
The Biden administration has appointed climate and energy expert Bidisha Bhattacharyya as Senior Policy Advisor in the Farm Service Agency (FSA), amongst four other top appointments Feb. 22.
FSA is an agency under the United States Department of Agriculture that was formed by merging the farm loan portfolio and staff of the Farmers Home Administration and the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service.
Bhattacharyya has spent three years deploying solar energy solutions in rural India, where she led the end-to-end rollout of a new off-grid solar product line in collaboration with technology startup Simpa Networks.
She was earlier posted as director of Climate and Energy Policy at the Centre for American Progress (CPA). Prior to joining CPA, Bhattacharyya was vice president of Emerging Markets at the impact-investment firm Village Capital, where she led a global team across India, Mexico, and East Africa to invest in high-impact startups innovating to solve problems across clean energy deployment and financial inclusion.
According to her bio on the CPA website, Bhattacharyya also spent four years on Capitol Hill as Senior Energy and Agriculture Policy Adviser to Senator Al Franken of Minnesota and as Energy and Agriculture Legislative Assistant for Congressman Betty McCollum of Minnesota.
“I care about solving big public problems, particularly those that pertain to climate change and environmental sustainability. For the past 15 years I’ve built and implemented solutions to problems across the public, nonprofit and private sectors,” Bhattacharya’s LinkedIn profile states.
Earlier in her career Bhattacharyya served as a Monitoring and Evaluation Fellow for the Akanksha Foundation, a program associate at College Possible, and a teacher at the Breakthrough Collaborative. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from St Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.