Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund - Board of Directors

Board of Directors

Mirin Kaur Phool, President

Ms. Phool 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.

Ms. Phool 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.

Manjit Singh, Vice Chairperson and Co-Founder

Mr. Singh 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.

Mr. Singh 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. Mr. Singh 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.

Raman Singh, Secretary

Ms. Singh 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.

Dr. Inder M. Singh, Member

Dr. Inder M. Singh is the CEO and Chairman of LynuxWorks. He founded Excelan, an early leader in local area networks in 1982 and served as its chairman, CEO and president until 1985. Excelan later merged with Novell. Dr. Singh was a co-founder of Kalpana, which pioneered Ethernet switching technology, and was one of Cisco's early acquisitions. Dr. Singh is a director of PacketStream and PocketPass, and has served on the boards of Mylex, Kalpana, Omnitel, Integrated Media Systems, Univation, Vivix, and Eon Systems. Dr. Singh is Board Chairman and ELC President for the Embedded Linux Consortium. In addition to his experience with high technology start up companies, Dr. Singh has prior management and technical experience with Zilog, where he headed the Networking and Advanced Systems Development Group. At Zilog, he was the architect of the Z8000 UNIX-based product line. Dr. Singh has also held positions at Amdahl, where he was a Senior Computer Architect, Gartner Research, the Yale Computer Center, and Ontel. He holds Ph.D. and M.Phil. degrees in computer science from Yale University, and an MSEE from Polytechnic Institute of New York.

Dr. Singh is very active in the Northern California Bay Area community, and is a co-founder of the Chardhi-Kalaa Sikh Community Center.

Gagandeep Kaur, Member

Ms. Kaur is a Financial Advisor at Prudential Financial in San Diego. She develops and manages financial plans for individuals, small businesses, large corporations and non-profit organizations.

As well as serving on the board of SALDEF, Ms. Kaur is the Vice President of the San Diego Alliance for Asian Pacific Islander Americans, a coalition representing 40 San Diego Asian Pacific Islander organizations; a Board of Trustee of The Sikh Foundation of San Diego; and a co-founder and Chairperson of the Greater San Diego Chapter of American Business Women’s Association (ABWA), a leading business women’s association in the United States.

Dr. Gurpal Singh Bhuller, M.D., Member

Dr. Bhuller is a practicing Orthopedic Surgeon in a group practice named Colonial Orthopedics, in Colonial Heights, Virginia.

Dr. Bhuller was born in Malaysia and did his orthopedic training in New Zealand. Along with running a medical practice, he is active in several professional organizations, including serving as a Trustee of the John Randolph Foundation, Hopewell, Virginia; Trustee, Cameron Foundation, Petersburg, Virginia; Director, Trinity Laboratories, Maryland; Trustee, Association of Sikh Professionals (ASP); Board Member, Sikh Education Fund of ASP; Trustee, Sikh Association of Central Virginia; and Director, Sikh Research Institute. Dr. Bhuller is also an avid collector of Sikh artifacts and coins. He is married and has two daughters.

Pavneet Singh Uppal, Esq.

Mr. Uppal 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.