Before becoming embroiled in her own version of Nannygate, Devyani Khobragade was known as a champion of Indian women’s rights and hoped to become her country’s ambassador to the United States.
The 39-year-old star diplomat at India’s Consulate General office on the Upper East Side was raised in the tough, bustling city of Mumbai.
A bright student, she attended the St. Joseph’s Convent School in the industrial district of Jalgaon and earned a degree in ophthalmology.
“I come from a family where our parents always encouraged that women must be economically independent,” Khobragade told The Indian Panorama newspaper in April.
But while she studied medicine, the ambitious young woman had the diplomatic life in her blood: Her father is a longtime Indian government official and her uncle once served as India’s deputy consul general in New York.
Khobragade was posted in Germany and Pakistan before becoming India’s deputy consul general for political, economic, commercial and women’s affairs in New York. She lives in Manhattan with her two children, ages 3 and 6. Her husband, a philosophy professor, stayed back in India.
Khobragade told The Panorama that she is determined to deftly manage both her career and family, despite being warned that it was difficult.
“[My parents] also told me that a woman couldn’t manage a family and children with a job like mine,” she said. “But I always thought if a man can do it, so could I.”
She added that she hoped to one day be appointed ambassador to the US.
She told The Panorama that one of her future goals is to have a “direct impact on a foreign policy for the underprivileged women.”
Khobragade has already championed women’s causes both abroad and here in the Unietd States, where she held a recent speaking tour promoting young female entrepreneurs from South Asia.
“I think India always believes in encouraging its women,” she said at the time.
US officials say she lied to get her own nanny into the country — and then paid her a mere $3.31 an hour.