Collection is open for research.
Gift of The Immigrant Story, June 2021 (RL2021-057).
Susheela Jayapal was born in Coimbatore, India, in 1962. Her family moved several times, until they settled in Jakarta, Indonesia, where Jayapal completed her high school education. She then attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and in 1983, she earned a bachelor's degree in economics. She then worked at Goldman Sachs in New York City for two years. In 1985, she relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where she attended the University of Chicago Law School. After earning her degree in 1988, she practiced law in San Francisco, California. Also in 1988, she and Bradley Stuart Miller were married; they later had two children, and divorced in 2014. In 1994, she and her family relocated to Portland, Oregon, and she worked as a lawyer for Adidas until 2000. She worked for various non-profit organizations, and in 2018, she was elected a Multnomah County commissioner from District 2, becoming the first Indian American to be elected to public office in Oregon.
Oral history interview with Susheela Jayapal, by Sankar Raman, SR 12309, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
This oral history interview with Susheela Jayapal was conducted by Sankar Raman on June 1, 2019. The interview was recorded for The Immigrant Story, an organization that documents and archives the stories of immigrants and refugees in the United States. Monica Salazar was also present.
In this interview, Jayapal discusses her family background and early life in India, Singapore, and in Jakarta, Indonesia, including her education. She talks about her reasons for going to the United States for college, and shares her experiences as an international student studying economics at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She talks about working for Goldman Sachs in New York State after graduating, then shares her experiences studying law at the University of Chicago. She also discusses the availability of Indian cuisine in the U.S. She talks about practicing law in San Francisco, California, about her marriage to Bradley Stuart Miller, and about raising biracial children in Portland, Oregon. She then talks about working as a lawyer for Adidas, shares her reasons for quitting in 2000, and discusses her involvement in several non-profit organizations in Portland. She shares her reasons for running for the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners in 2017, talks about her campaign, and discusses the issues she plans to address while in office, including housing. She closes the interview by talking about communicating with her constituents, and about encouraging more Indian Americans to run for office.
Joint copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society and The Immigrant Story. Use is allowed according to the following statement: In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted,
An article about Susheela Jayapal, "There is More Than One Way" by Monica Salazar, was based on this interview and published on The Immigrant Story website at