US President Joe Biden has nominated Indian-American Radha Iyengar Plumb to a top Pentagon position.
Currently serving as the Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Plumb was on Wednesday nominated to the post of Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment.
Prior to her appointment as Chief of Staff, Plumb was the Director of Research and Insights for Trust and Safety at Google, leading their cross functional teams on business analytics, data science and technical research.
She had also previously served as the Global Head of Policy Analysis at Facebook, where she focused on high risk/high harm safety and critical international security issues.
Plumb was also senior economist at RAND Corporation where she focused on improving measurement and evaluation of readiness and security efforts across the Department of Defense.
She has also held a number of senior staff positions on national security issues at the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and the White House National Security Council.
At the outset of her career, Plumb was assistant professor at the London School of Economics and did her postdoctoral work at Harvard. She received her PhD and MS in Economics from Princeton University, and holds a BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.