Indian-American community leader Harbir Kaur Bhatia has decided to contest for the Santa Clara City Council.
She will be running for the District 1 seat, where Kathy Watanabe is the incumbent.
Bhatia, who describes herself as a civic entrepreneur with a diverse background as an engineer, innovator, marketer, strategist, community activist, TV producer & host, told San José Spotlight that her priority would a better quality of life and more diverse voices at the table.
She is a Santa Clara Chamber of Commerce Board Member, Santa Clara cultural commissioner, deputy board member of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, an adviser to Joy of Sewa, part of the advisory board of Women’s March Bay Area, a Rotarian, a Library Foundation board member, and San Jose Sikh Gurdwara relations chair, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Bhatia’s Santa Clara Community Coalition to help battle COVID-19 has donated thousands of masks and face shields, and created food pantries and senior welfare calls, according to San José Spotlight.
“I think we’ve become very stagnant in how we run our cities and how we think about the future,” she told the Spotlight. “These things are what the new world is going to be like. It is not going to be bureaucracy existing for the sake of bureaucracy.”
She cited the managing of Levi’s Stadium as one of the areas where improvements can be made.
“Instead of creating value, (the stadium’s) becoming a common conversation topic of disappointment and divisiveness in our community,” she told the Spotlight. “When you bring in an organization like the 49ers in the city, you better make sure that you also bring in the right kind of support to manage that relationship.”
