Dear Asia Pacific Leaders,

For those who I haven’t met, my name is Suma Shamanna. I have always believed in enabling

our community as a whole to live a compassionate, willing, inclusive life. I have found my

passion in working with the organizations that have an important role in shaping our

communities.

I believe the DNC/DA is an inclusive and effective organization that aligns with my passion and

therefore am able to have an influence in how our communities thrive. I can see this in the work

that I have done over the years in DA and did with fundraising activities for my congressman

David Wu, Oregon’s 1st Congressional district back home. I am currently serving as DA India

Country Chair for the second term and Chief of Information Security, globally.

Our AP region is the home for a passionate, dedicated and extremely talented volunteer base.

There is a strong need to unite and unify all of the volunteer talents and strengths to build a

strong ecosystem of American voters abroad and having served in committees up and down the

organization, I want to help achieve this goal.

We have witnessed testing times during the COVID-19 pandemic. A significant number of

members have since relocated to the States. Our challenge in the region is inclusion,

unification, leadership development and membership growth. With the Presidential Primaries

right around the corner and the Presidential Elections approaching soon, I strongly believe that

we need laser-focused, targeted voter outreach and membership drives across the region.

I am an Asian American (Oregon voter residing in Bangalore, India) and a long-time DA

member. My diverse experience of having lived and worked across the globe has helped me to

be intuitive, responsive and connect with the culture of those living in Asia Pacific.

I am an action-oriented leader. I focus on problem statements and find the best solution. As an

AP RVC, I plan to enable and empower our volunteers, building diverse teams supported by

competitive tools and technology to streamline tasks and effectively manage volunteer time. I

want us to face these challenges together, head-on.

I want to bring to AP and our ExCom a start-up mindset with clear, crisp goals and definitive

timelines. I am quick to recognize opportunities, identify high-visibility, high-impact projects and

inclusion of AP leaders and volunteers, create task forces of interest to the AP region, identify

mentors, onboard new leaders, implement mentor-mentee programs and delegate ownership to

new leaders. Creating internship opportunities across the teams not only help us establish a

strong pipeline of talented volunteer base but also encourage youth participation in democracy.

Asia Pacific is the most transient region, and we need to be there to help volunteers participate

when they like as much as they would like.

I plan to further automate repetitive tasks and simplify administrative burdens for the Country

Committees. This helps Country and Chapter Committees to focus on building community and

voter outreach. As a Country Committee Leader in India, I have demonstrated saving the

Country Committee from falling off non-compliance to now bustling with activities. Under my

leadership, the DA India Phonebanking team ranked among Top 5 globally and Number 1 in

Asia-Pacific in voter outreach during the 2020 Presidential elections. I focus on metrics and

driving the real results, and I want to make sure everyone has the tools they need to succeed in

a safe and secure manner.

I believe that a combination of my experience in technology and my passion will help the region

and in turn DA accomplish the objective of ensuring we have the right issues highlighted that

help drive strong voter registration, turnout and fundraising.

I am lucky enough to know so many of you personally. Over the next few weeks I would really

like to hear what has worked and what has not worked for your countries and/or chapters. I am

always excited to hear, learn, incorporate new ideas, suggestions and improvements from

volunteers and leaders. I am going into this with open eyes and experience from decades past. I

will collaborate with Country and Chapter leaders in building a pathway to a sustainable

volunteer base and supporting our country committees in Asia Pacific and projects we can pilot,

as we have always been the Ideation factory of Democrats Abroad.

Given the opportunity, I believe that I can bring about the necessary focus and vision for the

Asia-Pacific region and play a key transformative role.

I am looking forward to serving the Asia Pacific region as a Regional Vice Chair. I ask for your

support and your vote for the next two years as we enter the Presidential Primaries and

Presidential Elections.

Democratically yours,

Suma Shamanna