Mindy Kaling

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Mindy Kaling (born Vera Chokalingam^[1]^[2] in 1979) is an American actress and writer who can be seen as Kelly Kapoor on the NBC sitcom The Office. Kaling is also a writer of several of the show's episodes.

Kaling graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1997. Among her classmates was actress Alison Folland.

The following year, she began attending Dartmouth College. While in college, Kaling was a member of the improvisational comedy troupe "The Dog Day Players," a skit writer for the a cappella group "The Rockapellas" and creator of the comic strip in The Dartmouth college newspaper titled "Badly Drawn Girl," written under the name "Mindy Chokalingam." In 2000, she portrayed Ben Affleck in a play entitled "Matt & Ben". She graduated from Dartmouth in 2001.^[3]

In late 2004, she was hired as a writer and performer for the upcoming American version of The Office. Originally, producer Greg Daniels wasn't sure where to use her on screen in the series until the point came in the script for the episode "Diversity Day" when Steve Carell's insensitive character Michael Scott needed to be slapped by a minority. "Since then, I've been on the show," Kaling stated in an interview.^[4]

She had her first onscreen role in a feature film in The 40 Year-Old Virgin. In April 2006, she was a guest writer for Saturday Night Live.