Ro Khanna

Some Lesser Known Facts About Ro Khanna

• Ro Khanna was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to an Indian immigrant family.

• Ro’s maternal grandfather, Amarnath Vidyalankar, was a renowned politician, social worker, and journalist. He had played a significant role in the Indian independence movement. He has also worked with Indian freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai and spent two years in jail in the pursuit of Dominion status for India.

• In an interview, Ro mentioned that when he was in ninth grade, he was writing an essay on the first Gulf War, which sparked his interest in activism and politics.

• In 1996, he did door-to-door canvassing for Barack Obama‘s first campaign for the Illinois Senate.

• In 1998, while studying at the University of Chicago, he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, which is the oldest honor society that aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.

• As a first-year student at the University of Chicago, Khanna interned for Jack Quinn, when Quinn served as the chief of staff for Vice President Al Gore.

• In his second year, he interned at former President Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center.

• From 2004 to 2009, he worked as an attorney at O’Melveny & Myers, where he represented technology companies in intellectual property and trade issues.

• In 2009, Barack Obama appointed Khanna as the deputy assistant secretary of the United States Department of Commerce. In this role, Ro led various international trade missions and worked to increase United States exports. Later, he was appointed to the White House Business Council.

• In 2011, Khanna left the United States Department of Commerce and joined a law firm named Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Silicon Valley.

• From 2012 to 2016, Khanna served as a visiting lecturer of economics at Stanford University, a lecturer of law at the Santa Clara University School of Law, and a lecturer of American jurisprudence at San Francisco State University.

• In 2012, Ro Khanna published his first book on American competitiveness in business, Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing is Still Key to America’s Future.

• In 2012, he was appointed to the California Workforce Investment Board.

• In 2014, Ro Khanna ran for California’s 17th congressional district seat. He finished in second place. Although he lost the general election to Mike Honda, but received huge support from the Silicon Valley tech industry.

• In 2015, Ro Khanna served as the vice president for strategic initiatives at Smart Utility Systems, an energy efficiency company in Santa Clara.

• In 2016, Khanna challenged Honda again for a congressional district seat. He narrowly finished in position one.

• In the 2016 general election, he defeated Mike Handa by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, with significant support from venture capital firms and tech companies. Khanna was re-elected in 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024 for California’s congressional district seat.

• In 2017, Ro Khanna co-founded the NO Political Action Committees (PAC) Caucus in the House to refuse PAC money and reduce corporate influence.

• In November 2017, his Valor Act was signed into law, making it easier for companies to offer apprenticeships to veterans.

• Also in 2017, he and Rep. Thomas Massie and others introduced a bill to stop U.S. military aid to Saudi Arabia’s campaign in Yemen.

• In 2018, Ro drafted an Internet Bill of Rights in response to data-privacy scandals, releasing a set of principles that include data control, consent, and net neutrality.

• In 2018, Ro Khanna supported the workers of Starbucks and Maximus, who tried to form unions. He urged California Lawmakers to make a law that sets better standards for fast-food workers, including pay, working hours, safety, and training.

• On 25 February 2020, Ro Khanna led a campaign to implement a gender inclusive “X” identifier for LGBT people on the US passport.

• In 2022, Ro was appointed to the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, a bipartisan commission charged with making policy recommendations to Congress and the Executive Branch.

• In February 2023, he was named to the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, where he worked on rebalancing the USA’s relationship with China.

• In 2024, Khanna introduced a universal childcare bill that would provide childcare costs at $10 per day for families earning under $250,000 a year and also set a minimum wage of $24 per hour for childcare workers.

• In January 2025, Ro Khanna was appointed as the ranking member on the United States House Armed Services Subcommittee for Cybersecurity, Innovative Technology, and Information Systems.

• In November 2025, Khanna led a bipartisan effort that forced the Justice Department to release all unclassified files related to Jeffrey Epstein. The United States House passed the bill with an overwhelming vote of 427-1, and the Senate followed suit shortly after. Khanna warned Justice Department officials against blocking the release, warning that they could face prosecution under the new law.

• Additionally, he publicly called for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to be replaced, criticizing his handling of rising health care premiums in the USA.

• In November 22025, Ro has been actively advocating for stronger regulation on AI. He has urged Congress to adopt a national AI jobs plan to protect workers from automation, including ideas like AI academies to train youngsters for future jobs. Additionally, Khanna has criticized industries that are using AI to replace human creators.

  

• Ro Khanna describes his philosophical beliefs as “Gandhian.”

• Khanna’s wife, Ritu Khanna, is the daughter of a well-known businessman. In 1975, her father founded Transtar, a company that supplies automotive transmission parts in Solon, Ohio. The Monte Ahuja College of Business in Cleveland, Ohio, is named after her father, Monte Ahuja, who donated $10 million to the school—the largest donation in the university’s history.