3 NoVA Residents Named To State Asian Advisory Board

RICHMOND, VA — Three Northern Virginia residents were among the seven people appointed by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on Jan. 9 to serve on the Virginia Asian Advisory Board. The advisory board is charged with advising the governor on creating economic, professional, cultural, educational and governmental links between the state government and the Asian American community.

The board consists of 21 members appointed by the governor. Eighteen are citizen members representing business, education, the arts and government, with at least 11 of them of Asian descent. The citizen members serve four-year terms. The other members come from the governor's administration.

Fairfax resident Carla Okouchi, an employee of Fairfax County Public Schools who works as a music educator and choral director, Praveendharan Meyyan, an Arlington resident who serves as a senior economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Jewan "Jack" Tiwari, a resident of Manassas who serves as president of the Nepalese American Forum for Political Empowerment, were among the Virginians named to the board.

Tiwari, who is past president of America Nepal Society, also works as a Realtor and is chief executive officer of Prime Estates Inc. and Arbina LLC. He immigrated to the United States from Nepal in 2004 and has lived in Northern Virginia since 2005.

The other Virginians appointed to the board were Melody Agbisit of Norfolk, a counselor educator; Suja Amir of Henrico County, a policy analyst at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons; Justin Lo of Richmond, associate general counsel at the Virginia State Corporation Commission; and Marie A. Sankaran Raval of Henrico County, a pediatric anesthesiologist and assistant professor of anesthesiology in the Department of Anesthesiology at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.

The Virginia Asian Advisory Board was established by statute in 2001, followed by the Virginia Latino Advisory Board in 2005. In March 2019, Northam signed into law a bill to create the Virginia African American Advisory Board.