As former U.S. Ambassador to India Richard Verma ’90 tells it, his parents arrived in New York City from India in 1963 with $14 and a bus ticket.
“They started over with next to nothing, and in a generation, their kid goes on to be U.S. ambassador to India and deputy secretary of state,” he says. “That’s a great immigrant story, a great American story. I know I have had these opportunities because of my parents and so many other people along the way — coaches, teachers, friends, employers who have given me a chance. I feel a special obligation to give other people a chance because I know how hard that climb is.”
Strong Ties to Lehigh
His success story led the Lehigh Lawyers Association to honor Verma at its annual spring award dinner on May 2 at the Penn Club in New York City.
“It was a really special night,” he says. “The Lehigh Lawyers Association is a group of amazing, talented people. I was gratified to see a lot of my former Lambda Chi fraternity members show up as well.”
Verma says his deep connections to Lehigh, which include past service on the Alumni Association board, as a Young Alumni trustee, a member of the Board of Trustees, and the 2019 commencement speaker, stems from the sense of community he discovered as a student.
“It’s about standing up for each other and taking care of one another,” he says. “I’ve seen that in the Lehigh community for over 34 years now. It really is a network of faculty and staff who look out for you, not just while you’re a student but after graduation as well. It sounds like a cliché, but it’s real: You have this lifelong family.”
Passage to India
Verma attended Lehigh with an Air Force ROTC scholarship and an industrial engineering major. He says he thought he would pursue astronaut training, but subjects like advanced calculus and thermodynamics redirected him to his strengths in the liberal arts, particularly law and policy. Working in Washington, D.C., during summer and winter breaks for U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha, who chaired the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, solidified his career path.
Verma’s experiences in the Air Force, in private law practice, as senior national security adviser for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led him to the role of U.S. ambassador to India in December 2014. He was the first Indian American to serve in the position.
“It was the honor of a lifetime to go back to the place where my parents were raised and lived through difficult times with India’s independence movement and the partition in South Asia,” he says. “I got to see the places where my mom taught school, my dad taught school, where my mom settled as a refugee. People who knew my parents filled in the blanks of their lives for me.”
Embracing a Deeper Relationship
The major challenge of his ambassador role, Verma says, was overcoming what India Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls “the hesitations of history.”
“What he means by that is we had decades where we were not cooperating, where we were not necessarily close partners, and we were lined up very differently,” Verma explains. “That doesn’t just change overnight. So, you’ve got to understand history, why things happened the way they did, and figure out how to build your way out of it with new partnerships, trusted relationships, and new initiatives. The most challenging part was embracing and constructing a relationship for this century that was not bogged down by what had happened in the prior century.”
Verma hit the ground running as President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker all made separate visits to India within his first 30 days there.
“That gave a sense of how intense this was going to be and frankly how fun and fulfilling an assignment it was,” he says.
The U.S.-India relationship deepened considerably across issues such as defense, trade, and mitigating climate change. Verma became the first in his position to visit all 29 Indian states. Forbes called him “one of the most consequential envoys ever to occupy the prestigious post … [who] raised the partnership to unparalleled heights in virtually every arena of bilateral cooperation.”
Answering Another Call to Serve
After serving as ambassador from 2014-17, Verma returned to the private sector until U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked him to serve as deputy secretary of state for management and resources. He began in April 2023 and has led a department-wide modernization program, ensuring the State Department and its 80,000 people around the world have the tools, training, and resources to compete in a challenging global geopolitical environment.
“It’s a great honor to be in this position,” Verma says. “As everyone knows, it’s not a quiet or calm time in global affairs, which makes this job even more challenging. In the first 14 months, I’ve been to 46 embassies and consulates around the world. I’ve come back really inspired by our people, who are doing a complicated, difficult mission on behalf of the American people.”
