Meet Shanti Sethi, the Indian-American Navy veteran and Kamala Harris's defence advisor

Shanti Sethi was also the first female commander of a US naval vessel to visit India. (Image credit: LinkedIn)

Shanti Sethi, an Indian-American Navy veteran, has joined US Vice President Kamala Harris's office as her executive secretary and defence advisor, reported news website Politico.

Sethi was the first Indian-American commander of a major US Navy combat ship and her appointment was confirmed by Harris's senior advisor Herbie Ziskend to Politico.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Shanti Sethi commanded the guided-missile destroyer, USS Decatur, from December 2010 to May 2012 where she was responsible for training, manning, and deploying a ship and crew of over 200 sailors.

Sethi was also the first female commander of a US naval vessel to visit India.

Between March 2017 and August 2019, she also commanded the Naval Task Force responsible for the defense of NATO Europe against ballistic missile attacks from Iran.

When she joined the Navy in 1993, the combat exclusion law was still in effect. The Combat Exclusion Policy, dated back to 1948 when the Women's Armed Services Integration Act excluded women from combat positions. So, Sethi was limited in what she could do.

However, when she was an officer in 2013, the Exclusion Act was lifted. It made both men and women are eligible to serve in front line combat and complete combat operations.

"I was able to move on to have a career path that was much more open to me because I was going into this very male-dominated environment," Sethi told USA Today in an interview last year.

Her father immigrated to the US from India in the early 1960s while her mother was born in Canada and became a naturalized US citizen at 12.

Sethi said that although she didn't have a traditional upbringing as the child of an immigrant because her mother had been raised in the country, her appearance often made her feel excluded.

"My mom is blond and blue-eyed, and I am not. So I can remember as early as second or third grade being left out," Sethi told USA Today. "In the 1970s, there were very few Indian Americans outside of a few small enclaves. So I remember being very different and being treated differently, even from a young age."

In her new role, Sethi coordinates National Security Advisor documentation across the Office of the Vice President Kamala Harris who is the first-ever person of Indian origin to be elected as the Vice President of the United States.