Guest Kishan Putta—who boldly introduced himself to everyone the first week of college as Kishan, like fishin’—always knew a life of public service would suit him. His parents both immigrants from small villages in India, worked for the state of New York, his mother in biology and his father as an engineer in environmental issues. To Kishan it just made sense to want to give back. But he was unsure the type of service that he would want to do and on what scale.

His first step to figuring that out was through graduate school at Harvard’s Kennedy School and, though getting the broad survey he knew would be helpful he took another path to international service. After getting the opportunity to travel abroad to both India and Chile to write travel guidebooks, he turned to political journalism for a number of global publications. Eventually he landed in Washington, DC. When he started covering health care policy, he knew he’d found his niche.

After a number of years working on the outside looking into a policy issue, he decided he wanted to work on the issue itself and took a few routes to do that before working on the policy side. In the meantime, he realized that his life in D.C. also afforded him the opportunity to take part in local service and found himself on local ballots more than once.

In this episode, find out from Kishan how putting yourself out there and figuring out what your neighbors need is at the core of being useful…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.

About This Episode's Guest

Kishan Putta has worked for over a decade in healthcare policy in Washington D.C., where he also has served in elected office, representing two different neighborhood wards as commissioner. He currently lives in the Burleith/Georgetown neighborhood of D.C. with his wife and young son. You can find him on Twitter @KishanForDC. (319)

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com

Putting Yourself Out There: Kishan Putta on getting to know people and asking what they need

Roads Taken