Nishit Sahay

Affiliate Faculty

Immigrant’s issues, Immigration Reforms and American Values, Contributions of diasporas in US Society and Economy, Social Science and Globalization, Public-Private sector’s engagements to mitigate institutional issues hampering economic growth, Policy towards Industry 4.0

Nishit Sahay is Senior Advisor-External Relations at IIR. He leads center’s external relations efforts that build and sustain IIR’s expertise and offerings to the wider audience nationally and globally. He works closely with faculty, staff and key persons in the university to enhance academic and research collaborations of the center with Universities, public and private institutions, donor organizations and philanthropic groups. Sahay also assists IIR's leadership in wide range of fundraising activities, including providing stewardship, identifying new prospective donors, developing solicitation goals, objectives, and strategies that cultivate support for public service education with a focus on immigration policy & welfare.

At the center, he works on issues concerning social, political and economic contributions of immigrants and their integration into the United States. His interests and expertise throw light on American Ingenuity in social, economic and technological innovations that help United States maintain an edge over others. He firmly believes that Science without Social concerns is a disaster and suggests policy makers to keep social science in mind while formulating public policy. He argues that an investment in STEM education would help US employers hire more technically skilled workforce from the native American population. IIR’s experts and its rich resource of intellectual capital provide him an ideal platform to work on immigration issues and immigration policy reforms that address concerns about replacement of U.S. workforce while still meeting employer’s needs.

He is currently working with senior colleagues on projects to evaluate VA’s various immigration welfare programs and other innovations in the field on diasporas from various countries. The key aspects of these studies are to understand and evaluate how immigration impacts on various socio- economic indicators such as job creation, economic upliftment and national security. His special interest is to create an electronic dashboard for effective immigration management system for the state and employers in Virginia.

He has been associated with GMU for over 20 years. He had been the Advisor South Asia Projects of Mason Enterprise Center (MEC) where he worked closely with Mason’s vice President of Research and MEC’s Managing Director. Before coming to IIR, Sahay was Associate Director-Executive Education in the then School of Policy, Government and International Affairs (SPGIA), a highly reputed public policy school within George Mason University.

Sahay is a globetrotter who in his various leadership roles is accustomed to working closely with senior government officials, executives of global corporations and various international institutions to explore areas of mutual interests in this globalized world. He is known as bridge builder between various stakeholders that set tone and directions of globalization, economic development and public policy.

In India he is instrumental in setting up various centers of excellence in higher education, consultancy, research and training. He is a member of general council of the prestigious Indian Police Foundation and Institute, an autonomous policy think tank with focus on national and international security. Sahay also serves as the Vice President and Chief Strategy officer, VP-CSO of RR&S Consulting Group LLC, a leading global consulting firm specializing in regional economic development and public policy.

Sahay holds M.S. in Transportation, Policy, Operations & Logistics (TPOL) from George Mason University; M. Sc. in Experimental Nuclear Physics from the department of Physics & Astrophysics, University of Delhi; Master’s in International Business from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) and Bachelor’s in Science with honors in Physics from Ranchi University, India.