Bobby Jindal

Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971 ) is an American politician who served as the 55th governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016.

Piyush Jindal was born on June 10, 1971, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to immigrant Punjabi Hindu parents.

He is the first of two sons of Raj (née Gupta) and Amar Jindal, from Punjab, India.

His father is a civil engineer and graduate of Guru Nanak Dev University and Punjab University.

His mother is a graduate of Rajasthan University and worked in nuclear physics at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh.

Before migrating to the United States, both of his parents were lecturers at an Indian engineering college.

At the time of their move to the U.S., Raj Jindal was to be a doctoral candidate in physics.

They left Malerkotla, Punjab in January 1971, six months before their son was born.

Jindal's paternal grandfather was a merchant from Khanpur, Samrala and his maternal grandfather was a Ferozepur banker.

The family settled near Louisiana State University.

Jindal attended Baton Rouge Magnet High School, graduating in 1988.

While in high school, he competed in tennis tournaments, started various enterprises such as a computer newsletter, retail candy business, and a mail-order software company.

He spent free time working in the stands at LSU football games.

Jindal graduated from Brown University in 1992 at the age of 20, with honors in two majors, biology and public policy.

Jindal was admitted to the Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME), guaranteeing him a place at Brown Medical School.

He did not pursue his Medical Doctorate.

Jindal has been credited with leading Brown University's College Republicans student group.

Jindal was named to the 1992 USA Today All-USA Academic Team.

In 1993, U.S. Representative Jim McCrery (whom Jindal had worked for as a summer intern) introduced him to Governor Mike Foster.

He applied to and was accepted by both Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, but studied as a Rhodes Scholar where he received an MLitt in political science with an emphasis in health policy from New College, Oxford in 1994.

The subject of his thesis was "A needs-based approach to health care".

After completing his studies at Oxford, Jindal turned down an offer to study for a D.Phil. in politics, instead joining the consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

He then interned in the office of Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, where McCrery assigned him to work on healthcare policy; Jindal spent two weeks studying Medicare to compile an extensive report on possible solutions to Medicare's financial problems, which he presented to McCrery.

In 1995, Jindal was appointed secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

In 1996, Foster appointed Jindal as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, an agency that represented about 40 percent of the state budget and employed over 12,000 people.

Foster called Jindal a genius who had a great deal of medical knowledge.

Jindal was 24 at the time.

In 1999, he was appointed president of the University of Louisiana System.

At 28, Jindal became the youngest person to hold the position.

In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Jindal as principal adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Jindal first ran for governor of Louisiana in 2003, but narrowly lost in the runoff election to Democratic candidate Kathleen Blanco.

In 2004, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the second Indian American in Congress, and he was reelected in 2006.

To date, he is the only Indian American Republican to have ever served in Congress.

A member of the Republican Party, Jindal previously served as a U.S. representative from Louisiana from 2005 to 2008, and served as chair of the Republican Governors Association from 2012 to 2013.

Jindal ran for governor again in the 2007 election and won.

Jindal was re-elected in 2011 in a landslide, winning more than 65 percent of the vote.

He was the first Indian American governor, and the only one until Nikki Haley became Governor of South Carolina in 2011.

On June 24, 2015, Jindal announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election.

He suspended his campaign in November 2015, subsequently announcing his support for Marco Rubio.

He finished his term as governor in January 2016.