Meet the Co-founders
Rajiv Bhateja
Rajiv first became involved in U.S. politics in 2004. He volunteered for the first Obama campaign in 2008, co-founded Silicon Valley Courageous Resistance in January 2017 and They See Blue® in July 2018. He serves on TSB's National Strategy Team and helps coordinate its technology and data management activities.
Rajiv grew up in Bangalore, India, and earned a bachelor of technology from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He also holds master's and doctoral degrees in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked at eight startup companies in Silicon Valley, most recently as vice president of engineering. In his hometown, Rajiv serves on the Community Relations Committee and chairs the Technology Committee.
As a teenager, Rajiv spent three months hitchhiking by himself through Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and most of Western Europe, all the way to Umeå in northern Sweden. Rajiv enjoys hiking and loves sculpture. His car automatically shuts off whenever he passes by a French bakery.
Sunil Mehta
Sunil had been blissfully living and working in Silicon Valley (while staying clear of politics) for more than three decades when the unthinkable happened in the November 2016 election. This spurred him to get involved in the ground game of politics for the first time in his life. He shared the details of his journey into activism in a Medium article, which was published in June 2018, shortly before he co-founded They See Blue in his backyard with like-minded friends.
Sunil grew up in Bombay, India, and earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering at IIT-Bombay. He moved to the U.S. in 1980 for graduate school and received advanced engineering degrees from Penn State and MIT. After completing his graduate studies in 1984, he started his first job with Intel in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has lived ever since. He has worked in the semiconductor industry for more than 40 years in both technical and management roles, and still enjoys being a part of this exciting industry. He has authored 18 publications and holds 92 U.S. patents.
Besides the full-time high-tech job and political activism, Sunil likes to spend time on his various other interests. He is a movie buff (both Hindi and English films), an aficionado of Hindi film songs, and a voracious reader of books and comics. Over the past three years, Sunil has been spending much of his spare time building a blogging/reference website encompassing his various interests. He just completed the work on the website and it is now live: sunilslists.com.
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Rajat Srivastava
Rajat, a long-time Bay area resident, started his hi-tech career at HP, right after earning his graduate degree in engineering from Virginia Tech. Since then, he has worked here in large, medium and small companies in senior management roles as well as an individual contributor.
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2016 was a wake up call. He decided to stop complaining about the problem (about extreme and fascist rightwing actions, policies and politics) during social events, and actually decided to do something to change the direction of the country. His two main motivators are the environment (including the impact of climate change) and his American-born children. He was fortunate to find some energetic and passionate co-founders to help start and build They See Blue.
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Rajat's other passions are gardening and sports. Rajat is a Master Composter with Santa Clara County, and he volunteers part of his spare time teaching young school kids about the virtues of composting. He is a tennis enthusiast and plays regularly and watches professional tournaments.
The Founders Meeting
The founders meeting of the They See Blue® organization occurred on June 9, 2018 in the backyard of Sunil Mehta's home. From left to right: co-founders Rajat Srivastava, Sunil and Rajiv Bhateja with friend, Shashi Agarwal.