September 2004
Manjit Singh
was born and raised in Bombay, India. He completed his Bachelor of
Engineering, Computer from the University of Bombay in 1989. After
completing his Bachelor’s, Manjit worked as a Systems Engineer for
sometime with International Data Machines (IDM) in Bombay. Then in
late 1990, Manjit came to the United States for further education.
He received his Master’s Degree in Computer Science in 1992 from the
State University of New York (SUNY) in Albany, New York.
Manjit is a devout
Sikh and plays an active role in the Sikh American community. In
1996 Manjit and Jaideep Singh (a Sikh Californian) jointly founded
an organization called Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force
(SMART). SMART started no more than an idea which came out of
several brainstorming sessions between Manjit and Jaideep while they
were members of “Khalsa
Net”, the only Sikh e-mailing list network available in the
early 90’s. Under the leadership of Manjit, SMART has grown from
being the first-ever organization that has constantly watched the
media and played a key role in correcting any negative and wrong
publications on Sikhism, to the largest national Sikh American civil
rights organization.
After the tragic
events of September 11, 2001, when Sikh Americans were suffering
from hate crimes, SMART provided a leadership role and worked hard
with Gurdwaras and local Sikh American groups in organizing press
conferences and other events for the correct portrayal of Sikhs and
Sikhism. SMART currently has an office and full-time staff in the
Nation’s Capitol of Washington, D.C, with representatives across the
country. SMART has and continues to play a proactive and vital role
in safeguarding the civil and religious rights of Sikh Americans. It
provides legal aid for Sikh Americans who face violations of their
civil and religious rights, discrimination and have been racially
victimized. SMART actively lobby’s in the U.S. Congress for equal
and fair rights of Sikhs in America. In addition to its work of
media analysis, SMART has also been instrumental in training more
than 5000 US law enforcement personnel about Sikhs. More
information about SMART can be found at
www.sikhmediawatch.org
It is important to
add here, that in spite of all these efforts and accomplishments,
Manjit continues to maintain a very low profile in the community. It
is surprising that many people in the community do not know that it
was Manjit who co-founded this organization and provided a
leadership role in its incubating stages. We would like to add here
that in order to continue on his low profile and humility path,
Manjit very reluctantly approved of this publication.
In August 2004 Manjit was appointed to the
Victim Services Advisory Board of the
Montgomery
County government in Maryland. He is a member of the Community Advisory Board for the
Washington
DC region of the
International Channel. He has also served for two
years on the Advisory Board of the
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Additionally he served
for two years as Member-at-Large on the Board of the
interfaith
Conference of Metropolitan Washington.
Manjit is a Computer
Scientist by training and profession. While working at IBM, Manjit
was one of the key persons responsible for designing a software
program called “Key Ring Organizer (KRO)--a client software
application for digital certificate management. Multiple private
keys and digital certificates are securely stored and managed in
disk files, Smart Cards and PC Cards. The KRO can generate, store
and select keys for use in signing of digital information or
authenticating the end-user to a host of secure client/server
applications. Manjit currently holds the patent for this KRO
software.
For the past two years, Manjit has been working for the University
of Maryland University College (UMUC) as a Senior Software Engineer
Manjit currently
lives in Germantown, Maryland with his wife and two daughters.
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