Washington:US President Barack Obama has nominated , Nisha Desai Biswal, an Indian origin as the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia.

Subject to confirmation by the Senate, Nisha Desai will replace incumbent Robert Blake.ashe is currently the Assistant Administrator for Asia at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), USAID website

Biswal, who has been the Assistant Administrator for Asia at the USAID, since September 2010.

From 2005 to 2010, she was the Majority Clerk for the State Department and Foreign Operations Subcommittee on the Committee on Appropriations in the US House of Representatives. From 2002 to 2005, she served as the Policy and Advocacy Director at InterAction.

Previously, Biswal had served as the professional staff of the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee from 1999 to 2002.

She served at USAID from 1995 to 1999 in a number of capacities including Special Assistant to the Administrator, Chief of Staff in the Management Bureau and in the Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance, and the Office of Transition Initiatives.

Biswal worked at the American Red Cross from 1993 to 1995 in the Washington DC headquarters, and as an overseas delegate in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.

She is also a member of the Congressional-Executive Commission on the People’s Republic of China since March 2011.

Mr.Subrat is her husband and they have two daughters, Safya and Kaya.Biswal’s parents migrated to U.S from Gujarat when she was a child.