DMA member and past president Sunil Saksena will speak to our group on the presidential election of 1876. That election was marred by claims of fraud, voter intimidation, arbitrarily changed vote counts and multiple sets of “certified” electoral college votes. It was followed by 4 months of chaotic negotiations and backroom compromises involving Congressional committees, Supreme Court Justices and campaign representatives. Finally, just 2 days before Inauguration Day, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner by 1 electoral vote over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, who won the popular vote by a huge margin.
Sunil was born in Lucknow, India in 1944. He graduated high school from La Martiniere College, Lucknow and received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.
He worked at Union Carbide India before proceeding to University of California at Berkeley for graduate work. He received both a masters degree in engineering as well as an MBA from Berkeley. He worked as a Mechanical Engineer at American Can Company in San Francisco where his claim to fame is that he designed the machine that puts the can cover on the beer can making it safe for you beer drinkers to imbibe. For the majority of his career, Sunil was in finance: first, as an international banker with Bankers Trust Company serving in Mumbai, Singapore and New York and then, as an investment advisor with Fidelity Investments from which he retired in 2004.
He and his wife Deepika have lived in Darien since 1985. They have two sons, one a doctor and the other a lawyer.
Arranged by Tom Igoe