Councilman Hemant Marathe has announced his candidacy to run for West Windsor mayor in the Nov. 7 election.
Marathe is seeking election to the four-year position being vacated by Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh, who is retiring at the end of his term in December.
Also open for election are the seats on council currently held by Linda Geevers and Jyotika Bahree, who was appointed to council on June 26 to fill the spot vacated by council president Peter Mendonez.
Marathe announced in a press release that he is running on a slate called “Standing Up for West Windsor” with Geevers and Virginia Manzari for council.
West Windsor’s elections are nonpartisan, and candidates are barred from running as a Democrat or Republican. They are allowed, however, to assemble into a slate.
Marathe, who has served on council since 2015, was previously a member of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Board of Education where he served as board president. He also ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor against Hsueh in 2013.
Marathe holds a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, a master’s from Virginia Tech and a bachelor’s from IIT Bombay, all in electrical engineering. He has lived in West Windsor since 1994, and ran an IT consulting business out of his home. In 2006 he started a business as a wholesaler of Indian groceries.
Geevers, who was also a long-time member of the school board, has served on council since 2005. She was originally elected on a slate with Hsueh, but later clashed with the mayor on a number of issues and aligned herself with Marathe.
A township resident for more than 20 years, she has a background in residential real estate and radio news. She earned a bachelor’s in communication arts from Cornell University.
Manzari is a current member of the West Windsor zoning board and holds an MBA from Cornell University. Her professional experience is in business development, strategic marketing and brand management. She has worked for Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. She ran unsuccessfully for council in 2015 on a slate along with Marathe.
Also running for mayor is Kamal Khanna, who announced his candidacy earlier this year. He has teamed in a slate along with council candidates Kristin Epstein and Yingchao “YZ” Zhang.
Khanna, who has been endorsed by Hsueh, served on council from 2009 to 2013 and has lived in town since 1978.
He holds a master’s degree in engineering and management and worked as an efficiency engineer and business analyst for a Fortune 500 company for 10 years. He currently owns his own international clothing company located in New York City.
Epstein is the executive director of the YingHua International School, a Mandarin language non-profit private K-8 school in Kingston. She earned an environmental engineering degree from Princeton University and a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins, and worked as an engineer for 10 years before becoming a stay-at-home mom.
Zhang is a current member of the WW-P Board of Education and has served there since 2014. He earned a bachelor’s degree from from the University of Science and Technology of China and a Ph.D. in high energy nuclear physics from SUNY Stony Brook in 1995. Zhang has served as director of sales engineering at NetScout Systems since 2008.
Councilman Hemant Marathe,
