Mala Adiga

Mala Adiga

Member

Mala Adiga was appointed to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board in 2025.

  
Mala Adiga was a Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States and the Policy Director to the First Lady at the White House. She led Dr. Biden’s policy portfolio, which consisted of education, women’s health research, ending cancer as we know it through the Cancer Moonshot, and supporting military families through the Joining Forces initiative.

Prior to this role, Mala joined the Biden for President campaign and then the Biden-Harris Transition Team as a senior policy advisor. Starting in January 2017, Mala worked at the Biden Foundation to advance community colleges and support military families.  
 
During the Obama-Biden Administration, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Academic Programs, overseeing a wide range of international education programs. She also was the chief of staff and senior advisor to the Ambassador-at-Large in the Secretary of State’s Office of Global Women’s Issues. Prior to this, Mala served as Director for Human Rights in the White House National Security Council’s Multilateral and Human Rights Directorate and as Counsel to the Associate Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. Before entering government service, Mala was on the legal team for the Obama presidential campaign.

Mala began her legal career as an associate at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago and then worked as a law clerk for U.S. District Court Judge Philip Simon in the Northern District of Indiana. She earned her JD from the University of Chicago Law School, her Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Minnesota, and her BA from Grinnell College.