Meet Shrina Kurani
Shrina Kurani is an engineer, entrepreneur, and fact-based problem solver, not a politician. The daughter of Indian immigrants who sought the American Dream, she has focused her career on building businesses that reduce waste and create quality jobs.
Now, Shrina is running for Congress to bring her approach to making things work better to Washington to put people first, develop a sustainable future, and build a Riverside County where people feel safe, healthy, and have opportunities to succeed in fulfilling jobs.
Raised to Work Hard
Born and raised right off the 91 Freeway in Riverside, Shrina is a first-generation American whose parents came to the United States seeking opportunity. Her father had earned a chemistry degree in India but in the Inland Empire, he found work in swimming pool maintenance. Shrina and her brother had to share a bed until her parents bought the pool supply store.
Shrina learned the values of hard work, hustle, and resourcefulness from her parents while they worked seven days a week, with a young Shrina and her brother helping after school and in the summers. The seed of entrepreneurship was planted for Shrina as she saw her parents work together to grow the business to over 14 locations throughout the Inland Empire, with her mother managing the accounting and her father overseeing the employees and also engaging in the local community through the Chamber of Commerce and as a planning commissioner.
Driven to Make Things Better
Growing up, Shrina’s parents preached effort and Shrina excelled in school, dance, and music, playing multiple instruments. She worked hard in public schools and graduated from La Sierra High School as the valedictorian at age 16. Shrina chose to stay local and go to UC Riverside, where she studied mechanical engineering to make things work better.
Shrina worked through school, including a job encouraging businesses to transition from natural gas to renewable energy and she worked on a design project for NASA. During her work in renewable energy, she became frustrated with the short-term profit motives that created resistance to long-term change. Shrina then paid her way through graduate school in Sweden and earned a Master’s Degree in Sustainability while working in Europe to use science to inform policy, including serving with a delegation to implement the Paris Climate Agreement.
Building Solutions and Opportunities Through Engineering and Business
Back in California, Shrina worked to start companies aimed at reducing waste and creating sustainable solutions for food and water, and she has worked as an advisor to startup businesses, both large and small, that are developing ways to make healthcare and education more affordable, accessible, equitable, and effective.
Most recently, Shrina has been building a company to increase opportunities by focusing on addressing disparities in the funding of startup businesses founded by women and people of color.
Shrina is proud to call the Inland Empire home and lives with her husband, Marius.