Bhojwani moved to
New York City in 1987 as a student at
Teachers College, Columbia University where she obtained her
Master's degree in
education with an emphasis on teaching English with the intention of returning to Belize to teach. She declined to pursue a career in education when the
New York City Department of Education would not help her obtain a green card. She instead took a job with
Asia Society, immersing herself in issues pertaining to
Asian Americans and, as an NBC biographical article describes it, realizing that "there were very few faces on the policy-making side that looked like the people she was trying to serve." Bhojwani founded the afterschool
South Asian Youth Action program in 1996 to support teenagers with ancestral origin from
South Asia, which continues to serve New York today. In 2001, Bhojwani re-enrolled at Teachers College for a doctorate in politics and education. In April 2002, New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg appointed her to the newly created role of Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, where she expanded protections and services for the city's
undocumented immigrants, domestic workers, and non-English speakers. She credits this role as demonstrating to her the power of a truly representative government, including having immigrants in positions of political influence to support immigrants. Bhojwani continued to work in philanthropy for Bloomberg, and moved to
London for a time. Bhojwani founded
New American Leaders in 2010 after the
United States Congress failed to create a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants and
Arizona enacted
Arizona SB 1070. She had considered running for office against
Sheldon Silver, but decided to instead focus on building a diverse pipeline of local and state elected officials. Bhojwani completed her doctorate at Teachers College in 2014, writing her thesis on immigrants and electoral politics. == Personal life ==