A neighborly welcome led Select Board candidate Vikram Kaul and his family to settle in Needham eight years ago. His wife, Sonia Shah, had accepted a job at State Street Corp. in Boston and the family was looking to move from Stamford, Connecticut. As they were looking at a house, Kaul said, a “neighbor walked across, and she was like, ‘Welcome!’ We hadn’t even bought the house. She was like, ‘Oh, you know, I used to have a friend who used to live here.’ She walked us through her experience of growing up in Needham, what Broadmeadow was like at that time, which was where my kids would go to school.”
Kaul and Shah bought that house.
It had taken a global journey to get there. Originally from Kashmir, Kaul grew up in Delhi, India. His father was an economics professor at a university there, but, Kaul says, he learned a lot about personal finance — his current profession — from the way his mom managed her household budget.
Kaul trained as a chemical engineer, but took a job in the finance department of the global giant General Electric.
“I spent about 14 years at GE, in different locations,” Kaul said. “It was a wonderful time. Being young and being given that responsibility of going across continents with different countries and different businesses . . . That was a wonderful learning experience.”
Eventually, Kaul worked at GE Finance corporate headquarters in Connecticut. “I learned the budgeting, how budgeting happens. How do executives at senior levels interact and think about things, right? And then, how do they disseminate the information and then get the rest of the team to buy in?”
That last question led Kaul to one of his favorite sayings, one that he repeated several times in a long conversation:
“Teamwork makes the dream work.”
Kaul went from GE to a bank, then left to start his own financial advisory business. While his business was officially based in Stamford, he had the flexibility to move for Sonia’s job.
In a YouTube video of a personal finance presentation Kaul gave in Stamford, he has a friendly, knowledgeable presence, listening carefully to questions. In person, he’s clearly used to public speaking and personal interaction.
One thing he may be less used to is town politics — this is his first try for elective office. He has long been involved in the Needham (and Greater Boston) community, but more on the cultural side. Kaul was one of the founding members of ICON, the Indian Community of Needham. One of his major initiatives has been working to provide Hindi language instruction.
“We set up a youth education program, a language program, which started out with five kids in a classroom. Two of them were mine. And that’s grown across the many years to almost a hundred students.”
He also helped to launch a cricket club, bringing access to a sport that’s hugely popular in India to kids and adults here. They play indoors in the winter and outside in the summer. “We have folks who are Britishers, Australian, Haitian, who come in and join in and play. And so, it just adds to the culture-building that we hope to achieve.”
Kaul’s personal culture-building includes close friendships. His friend Robert Mabry is a fan. “Our daughters are really good friends, and we became very good family friends,” said Mabry. “He’s a family man. He’s a great listener and a great guy.”
“His family invites us to Diwali, the Indian heritage holiday. It’s an honor. And he makes sure that when he hosts that party, he talks to everyone.”
Another friend, Raja Shaikh, was also enthusiastic. “[Vikram] is one of the people that I’ve seen really dive deep into a situation to find the details,” Shah said. “And not many people do that. … I am a physician and I know what research means.”
Kaul says his professional background and his community-building efforts are strengths despite his lack of town government participation.
“When people say, you know, why the Select Board and why now and so forth, right? Some of these questions, you know, I want to give that background. It just so happens that between being a community builder, the leadership skills that needed to build these organizations to the background I bring in the financial perspective to the time and place that Needham is at.
“Needham’s at a very interesting juncture. Our AAA rating, as we look forward to building some of these projects that we have in mind, which add to the benefits of being in Needham, will have us make some very crucial critical choices. Those will ask for some financial navigation, some budgeting skills, some leadership qualities, explaining, communicating clearly back to our residents, and most importantly, listening to our residents.”
What does he hear from potential constituents? “The recent referendum, you know, was another factor where people were . . . as I travel from street to street, as I listen to residents, those were some of the things which they felt that their voice needs to go back to Town Hall in a more effective manner.”
Kaul points to maintaining infrastructure and schools as things he’s been hearing about from voters. “We came for the schools,” he said. “And so I believe in the strong schools of Needham.” Despite that belief, Kaul’s two children are currently in private schools. He says his older child, an eighth grader, has been lobbying to go to Needham High next year, with an eye on joining the soccer team.
“You know, my family’s very supportive of what I’m doing. My kids are, they keep me humble, but at the same time, you know, they’re very gracious in saying, you know, we wanna share the time, because they’ve seen me be in the community for so many years.”
Is he ready? “I feel like I’ve held office in different ways,” Kaul said. “Yeah. Whether it’s being on the board, whether it’s ICON or setting up the Massachusetts chapter for our language classes, it’s big. It’s like, you know, having the team work together, right? Back to teamwork makes the dream work.”
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