upcoming…

+ more stories 🙂

past…

+ December 2023: Honored with the first-place prize in magazine profile writing at the 2023 San Francisco Press Club Awards.

+ November 2023: Honored with the first place Supple Award for Excellence in Religion Feature Writing at the 2023 Religion News Association’s Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence. My work also won third place in the Renner Award for Enterprise and Serials and Religion Story of the Year Award.

+ October 2023: Spoke about my reporting on caste and California’s bill to ban caste discrimination for Vox’s Today, Explained.

+ September 2023: Spoke about my reporting on caste and California’s bill to ban caste discrimination for KALW’s Crosscurrents.

+ July 2023: Appeared on KQED’s Forum to discuss my reporting on caste in the U.S. and explain the intricacies of California’s anti-caste bill.

+ June 2023: Discussed my reporting on caste in the US with Milan Vaishnav for The Grand Tamasha podcast. The Grand Tamasha is a co-production of the Hindustan Times and the Carnegie Endowment Center for Peace in Washington, D.C.

+ June 2023: Featured as a guest reporter for KQED’s podcast The Bay, discussing how caste has hit a nerve with Bay Area communities.

+ May 2023: In conversation with writer Katya Cengel at Books Inc. Berkeley, to discuss her critically acclaimed book Exiled.

+ May 2023: Appeared on the podcast Our Body Politic to discuss my reporting on caste in the U.S. for an episode examining the complexity of South Asian American identity.

+ May 2023: Appeared on NPR’s Here & Now to talk about my BBC audio documentary on caste in Silicon Valley and news surrounding a statewide bill to ban caste discrimination in California.

+ February 2022: Named a 2022 fellow with Periplus, a collective of BIPOC writers, working with writer Aurora Almendral.

+ October 2021: Honored and excited that my story for Politico Magazine, “How Hindu Nationalism Could Shape the Election,” won an award at this year’s South Asian Journalists Awards. View the entire list of winners here.

+ October 2020: Selected to be a part of the Class of 2020 for Rooted & Written, the San Francisco Writers Grotto’s 2nd conference by and for writers of color.

+ September 2020: Awarded a reporting grant from the Religion News Foundation’s Religion Journalist Relief Fund, part of an initiative to support religion reporters to continue to produce their best work under the difficult circumstances 2020 has posed.

+ September 2020: Chosen as one of nine grantees for the Asian American Journalists Association of San Francisco’s inaugural storytelling project Rising With the Tides, sponsored by Comcast California. The project is a response to the challenges AAJA-SF members have been facing in 2020 alongside the challenges of our country, and to support work that addresses the urgency of dismantling racism and anti-Blackness, and developing resilience and solidarity between AAPI and Black communities.

+ April 2020: Received one of two grants from the South Asian Journalists Association and Economic Hardship Reporting Project, to report on housing security. These grants aim to help finance freelance projects that cover the coronavirus outbreak and its impact, and support freelance journalists who may be facing financial hardship during this time.

+ November 14-15, 2019: As part of a panel with the Association of Independents in Radio, I spoke about how newsrooms can better work with freelance producers and how freelancers can more effectively approach their work at the People-Powered Publishing Conference, sponsored by Illinois Humanities.

+ October 2019: Talked to Milan Vaishnav at The Grand Tamasha podcast about my piece for The Atlantic on Howdy! Modi, and the larger significance of the historic rally where Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Trump appeared together before a crowd of 50,000 Indians. The Grand Tamasha is a co-production of the Hindustan Times and the Carnegie Endowment Center for Peace in Washington, D.C.

+ September 21, 2019: Honored to win in the radio/podcast category at the 2019 Religion News Association’s annual conference.

+ September 2019: Spoke on a panel about the nuances of covering the South Asian diaspora and its religions, politics and nationalisms at the Religion News Association Conference.

+ October 2019: Shortlisted in the enterprise reporting and outstanding reporting in any subject categories at the South Asian Journalists Association’s annual awards competition.

+ July 29, 2019: Received an honorable mention as a 2019 AIR New Voices scholar.

+ March 21, 2019: Spoke at Oakland International High School’s annual career week. All the students at the school are English language learners.

+ November 2018: Talked about podcasting and writing for the ear at the 2018 C.D. Wright Women’s Writer’s Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.

+ October 2018: Shortlisted in the enterprise reporting category at the South Asian Journalists Association’s annual awards competition.

+ June 13, 2018: Shortlisted in the broadcast reporting category at the Religion News Association’s annual awards competition.

+ April 25, 2018: Appeared on the BBC ahead of the verdict surrounding Kim Wall’s case to talk about its impact and the significance of her life and legacy. The Kim Wall Memorial Fund is still running strong.

+ November 14, 2017: Delivered a 45-minute talk at Foothill College’s International Education week about my career freelancing abroad and reporting on minority communities in the U.S. Many of the community college students spoke English as a second language.

+ November 1, 2017: Spoke with Radio New Zealand’s Nine To Noon program about my friend Kim Wall, freelancing while female, and the Kim Wall Memorial Fund. The Fund was established to honor Kim’s spirit and legacy and to offer support to women journalists. If you’re moved to help change the dynamics for women in media, please consider contributing. You can learn more about Kim here.

+ April 10, 2017: Appeared on Marketplace Tech to talk about a piece I wrote for Backchannel, now on Wired. about accent bias in voice recognition technologies.

+ January 23, 2017: Named a “Rising Star” and Senior Fellow with the Fund for Investigative Journalism and Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, as part of their nationally competitive journalism initiative to increase diverse and inclusive voices and topics in investigative journalism.

+ October 2016: Granted the South Asian Journalists Association’s fall reporting fellowship to report on the influence of Hindu nationalism in the United States.

+ December 21, 2015: Selected as an African Great Lakes Reporting Fellow with the International Women’s Media Foundation to report on democracy and governance in Uganda.

+ April 30, 2014: Wired covered a collaborative project I was involved with to document India’s 2014 election on Instagram and featured my photo of India’s Home Minister, Rajnath Singh (then the president of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party), as part of its slideshow of photographs from the project.

+ 2012: Selected as an Anne O’Hare McCormick Memorial Scholar to study at Columbia Journalism School.

+ 2010: Awarded the Suruga International Institute research grant to create, produce and host “Shizuoka Speaks,” a podcast series on racism, education and immigration in Japan.