Rukmini Potdar came to the United States from India in 1998 for her doctoral program at Cornell University and graduated with a PhD in Sociology, followed by a post-doc in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health; she spent several years in academia, before moving to Tampa, FL in 2016, mainly to flee the cold of upstate NY. She joined the Florida Guardian ad Litem Office - 13th Circuit as a volunteer in 2018 and was a full-time staff member within six months. She came to this country as a single mom with two children, aged 12 and 8; today, her daughter is a successful lawyer, just having celebrated her law firm’s fifth anniversary, and her son is in the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Engineering Program. Serving the mission of the Statewide Guardian ad Litem Office of representing Florida’s abused, abandoned and neglected children is a small way Rukmini gives back to the country of her adoption.
