Conversation Starter for From Heartland to White House & Back—A Dialogue on Democracy with Preeta Bansal

This conversation starter is based on Growing Edge Podcast Episode 26, where Carrie and Parker talk with Preeta Bansal about the inner work of democracy. A constitutional lawyer from Harvard Law School, Preeta served as General Counsel in the Obama White House, and played a major role in the Office of Management and Budget following the financial collapse of 2008. Preeta has now returned to her childhood hometown, Lincoln, Nebraska, where she expresses her life-long call to public service via ServiceSpace, a fascinating international network of citizens who engage in grassroots volunteerism for the common good. We think you will find her ideas about the citizen role in U.S. democracy engaging and challenging!

We hope you will gather with friends (safely in person or virtually) to discuss some of the thoughtful questions that this episode poses.

Preeta Bansal

Preeta Bansal Brief Bio

After a long and distinguished career scaling the heights of external and institutional power, Preeta has spent much of the last decade plumbing the depths of human consciousness for the source of internal power. Profound experiences with Vipassana meditation a decade ago shifted the course of her life, opening her to new ways of knowing and sensing, and to new approaches to social change.

A constitutional lawyer by background, Preeta’s prior roles include General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor in the Obama White House, Solicitor General of the State of New York, partner and practice chair at Skadden Arps (a leading corporate law firm in New York City), global general counsel in London for one of the world’s largest banks, a U.S. diplomat and Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She advised on the drafting of the constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In recent years Preeta moved back to her hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska. In her current work she bridges diverse sectors—public, private, philanthropic, academic, and voluntary—helping pioneer a new approach to community building that is powered by inside-out transformation.  After decades in the high-rises of Manhattan, the power centers of the U.S. government, and the stratospheres of the mind, she is literally re-grounding and re-rooting by reconnecting to land and earth in the American heartland, which is also the land of her heart.

She is currently a independent corporate director of a public corporation, a Lecturer at MIT, and a budding gardener/farmer and ongoing student of permaculture design.  She also serves as Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and on the boards of several leading community, nonprofit and university entities.