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Srinivas Rao Preston Kulkarni (born October 6th, 1978), a candidate for U.S. House of Representatives for Texas's 22nd congressional district. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district includes much of southeastern Houston, as well as most of the city's southern suburbs such as Katy, Pearland, and Sugar Land.

Early Life and Education
Sri grew up in a small house off Gessner Road, near the Sharpstown neighborhood where his house would get burglarized from time to time. He attended Lamar High School for three years, and dropped out his senior year. During his time off, he applied to the University of Texas Plan II Honors program, and got accepted. During what would have been his senior year of high school, he started his freshman year at the University of Texas. Sri would return his Junior Year of college to get his GED. Sri graduated from UT’s Plan II Honors Program in Linguistics and Russian. He had a stellar GPA, was part of UT’s first Mock Trial team to make nationals.

In 2017, Sri completed a mid-career Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School, where he was Vice President for Communications. Following the divisive 2016 Presidential election, Sri and a Republican colleague founded a bipartisan initiative called “Breaking Bread,” which aims to reduce the partisan hostility in our society, that has been repeated in several states.

Public Service
Following college, Sri was commissioned as a Foreign Service Officer by Secretary of State Colin Powell and served his country for 14 years. Afterwards he served as a Foreign Policy Advisor in Senator Kristin Gillibrand’s Office.

Foreign Service
During his 14 years of service, he served overseas tours in Iraq, Israel, Russia, Taiwan, and Jamaica. Sri speaks Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, Hebrew, and Russian. He has spent his career using his skills and education to find common ground between groups in conflict, such as Arabs and Kurds or Israelis and Palestinians. He also combatted the Russian government’s online misinformation campaign.

Pearson Fellowship
In 2015, Sri accepted a Pearson Fellowship to serve as a foreign policy and defense advisor on Capitol Hill, where he assisted Senator Kirsten Gillibrand with her work on the Senate Armed Services Committee. During this time, Sri got a rule changed by the DEA that now allows greater research on treatments for conditions such as intractable epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and chronic pain.

Health Care
Sri believes in a single payer system, such as Medicaid for all. He believes that medical cost's are rising too quickly and most of the money is being funneled into administrative fees. A universal healthcare system will not only ensure that every citizen has access to health care, but will also be cheaper for everyone. Universal healthcare must also include access to women’s reproductive health services, contraceptives, and vaccines for diseases such as HPV, which leads to over 40,000 cases of cervical cancer a year.