Shiva Kumar

Shiva Kumar is an award-winning director and editor, actor and writer. He has appeared on the ABC show, Quantico as Omar Sial, head of Pakistani Intelligence, on Madam Secretary as Ghayyur Wadeyla, Prime Minister of Pakistan, on Law & Order SVU as Niraj Patel, Food Network Producer and a number of commercials and industrials for The United Nations, Etrade, PNC Bank, PWC, Northwell Health and many more. Through his production company, Silver Arc, Shiva has worked in documentary, broadcast and commercial filmmaking for over 25 years. His programs have been seen on PBS, The Disney Channel, BBC, Israeli Cable, Canal Plus (France), RAI (Italy), NHK (Japan) and Doordarshan (India). In collaboration with his production partner, Joshua Greene, Shiva's films for PBS include "Witness: Voices from the Holocaust, "Hitler's Courts: Betrayal of the Rule of Law in Nazi Germany" and "Memory After Belsen and several animated children's specials. Recently Shiva completed writing a science fiction/fantasy trilogy called 'The Lanka Chronicles'. The trilogy, loosely based on the ancient Indian epic, The Ramayana is an epic set in the 23rd Century when most of Earth is underwater. Humans have terra-formed distant planets, and artificial intelligence has progressed to the point of robotic sentience. The Lanka Chronicles approaches this epic Indian tale from a fresh and contemporary perspective as it tackles the nature of divinity in our universe. Born in New Delhi and educated in England, Egypt, Bhutan, India and the United States, Shiva's many productions are informed by his diverse background as actor, teacher, keen student of world cultures, history, philosophy and his abiding passion for the art and science of producing meaningful media in a digital world.