Board of Directors

Manjit Singh, Chairman

Manjit co-founded SMART in 1996 and has been active in the Washington D.C. metro area Sikh community since early 1993.

He is a computer scientist by profession. He serves on the Victim Services Advisory Board of the Montgomery County, Maryland. He is a member of the Community Advisory Board for the Washington DC region of the International Channel. Mr. Singh served on the Advisory Board of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. He also served for two years as Member-at-Large on the Board of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington. Manjit earned an MS in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Albany and a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering from University of Bombay, India.

Navjeet Singh, Vice Chairman

Navjeet is currently Vice President of Commonwealth Corporation where he is responsible for leading the applied research and evaluation team to evaluate effectiveness of workforce development and training programs, research labor market trends and develop performance accountability systems for Massachusetts. Navjeet has previously worked in the areas of new product development, business strategy, and training services in the technology, international consulting and economic development fields including at Lucent Technologies-Bell Laboratories. He is currently a member of the Advisory Committee for the New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and a member of the Massachusetts Economic Assistance Coordinating Commission. He was also a Member of the Massachusetts Task Force on Performance Standards and Workforce Accountability — appointed by the Governor of Massachusetts (2007-2008) and received the Bell Laboratories Advanced Technologies Excellence Award (1999).

Navjeet has worked on Sikh and civil rights causes over the years. Over the past few years he has led SALDEF efforts on training and engaging law enforcement in New England as well as on Sikh advocacy efforts. Previously he has also served in the Sikh community in various efforts including at gurdwara schools, was a member of a panel at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1994, interpreted for the Akal Takhat Jathedar at the State of the World Forum, and was on the Board of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington. Navjeet grew up in India attending the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad. In the US he attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Navjeet lives in Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.

Mirin Kaur Phool

Mirin owns and manages a small business in Maryland and co-founded Kaur Foundation, a Sikh American Women’s Group, whose mission is to initiate awareness programs that promote a greater understanding of Sikhs within local communities and political groups.

Mirin has served on committees of several civic organizations including the Faith Communities in Action, Immigrant Empowerment Council, Guru Nanak Foundation of America, Parent Teacher Student Association of Montgomery County, and the Rockville Chamber of Commerce. She is married and has two children.

Raman (Kaur) Singh, Secretary

Raman is a small business owner who is active in the Sikh and Interfaith Communities. She serves on the Board of Trustees for the Sikh Foundation (Michigan) and was involved with the establishment of the Sikh Studies Program at University of Michigan. She works with the World Sabbath for Religious Reconciliation as well as other interfaith organizations, including the television program Interfaith Odyssey, shown in Detroit on PBS.

She has a M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering and is married with two children.

Pavneet Singh Uppal, Esq.

Pavneet is an attorney with Bryan Cave LLP with a practice focused on employee benefits litigation and labor and employment disputes, with an emphasis on unfair competition, wrongful discharge and equal employment opportunity litigation. A significant portion of his work involves state and federal court litigation concerning enforcement of covenants not to compete and defending management in lawsuits alleging violations of employment discrimination statutes, contracts and common law rights. In addition, he has experience in designing and implementing alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, as well as counseling employers in the prevention of discrimination and harassment in the workplace. He has litigated employment discrimination cases in federal and state trial and appellate courts, at arbitrations and before administrative agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Arizona Civil Rights Division and the National Labor Relations Board.

Jaideep Singh

Jaideep is an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at California State University, East Bay, and holder of the Ranjit Singh Sabharwal Chair in Sikh and Punjabi Studies. He has a B.A. in History, with a focus on the comparative histories of peoples of color in the Americas, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley.

While at Berkeley, he was the founder of the Sikh Students’ Association in 1989, and actively organized among Sikhs in the Bay Area for the following decade, addressing issues such as human rights violations among Sikhs in India, Sikh sovereignty, as well as explicating Sikh history, theology and culture to the campus community. In addition, he has done extensive research and filming for a documentary film excavating the lost history of Sikhs in the Second World War, through which he hopes to instill pride among Sikh youth in their glorious heritage, as well as help to recover this forgotten segment of the Sikh community’s collective history.

He has taught courses dealing with U.S. multiculturalism, ethnicity, and race in U.S. history and contemporary society at such colleges as  as Oberlin College, Humboldt State University, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, UC Irvine, the College of the Redwoods, and the Pacific School of Religion. His book manuscript, currently under review by Oxford University Press, focuses on illuminating the broader significance of three disparate case studies of contemporary, grass-roots political organizing by Sikh communities in the United States. He has also published several scholarly and community-oriented pieces about Sikh and South Asian American history, and various aspects of contemporary South Asian American communities. His research interests include the historical and contemporary development of the Sikh and South Asian American diaspora, contemporary race relations, representations of race and gender in popular culture, racialized politics, and the intersections of religious and racial bigotry in the contemporary United States.

Harminder Singh, Treasurer

Harminder is a CPA with over 8 years of accounting experience.  He has worked for an international management consulting firm, non-profit association, private security firm, international due diligence firm and currently he works at an independent non-profit scientific research organization.  He graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Accounting and Finance from George Mason University.

Harminder takes an active role in performing Seva in the Washington, DC area.  He served as the Director of Accounting and Finance for Sikhcess, a community based organization dedicated to engaging youth in Seva activities, such as feeding the homeless.

Kavneet Singh

Kavneet serves as a member of the Board and Managing Director of SALDEF and coordinates the legislative, education, and legal assistance programs. During his tenure at SALDEF, Kavneet has headed the Office of Media Relations, developed SALDEF’s interactive curriculum, “Sikhism 101 for Law Enforcement”, trained local, state, and federal law enforcement officials about awareness and protocol, and addressed audiences about Sikhism, the Sikh American community, civil rights and diversity at a number of local and national forums.

Kavneet is currently a Senior Manager with Kaiser Permanente where his responsibilities relate to Performance Management and Strategy Development. He also serves as a member the Diversity Advisory Council for the Health Plan. Additionally, he serves on the Advisory Board of the Prison Religion Project at St. Marys College, a group that works on the development of suggested prison religion policies on such topics as chaplaincy, resource allocation, and accommodation of diverse religions in prisons.  He has also actively been involved with various Sikh Youth Camps across the country over the past decade, and instructed students in Sikh history and ethos at the El Sobrante Gurdwara. Kavneet received his B.A. from the University of California with an emphasis in Public Health and the Healthcare Marketplace.