Desi By Design
Overview:
Create a ~ 10 member fellowship of passionate desi early in career folk who care deeply about learning about the intersectionality of being desi + changing the world through tech/entrepreneurship/business/venture capital.
Next Steps:
- Lean into my desi heritage more by reading more literature by Indian authors
- Interview my parents and learn more about their experiences in immigrating from India to the United State
- Link up with my friend Simi to start something like this through her established podcast series, Pioneers
- Partner with my friend Rachel to plan a webinar series around Asian American Alumni from Princeton as part of A4P
My learnings:
- What does it mean to be desi? Is this defined by a cultural, geographic, religious grouping?
- There’s a delicate balance between reaching out to big fish v. people who you think will actually respond
Outstanding questions
- Cui bono? What’s the value add to the speakers you reach out to?
- How do you prevent something like this from becoming transactional? E.g. would NOT want this to turn into a referral-sharing circle
- Why did we have an abominably low response rate?
- Does mixing culture and pre-professional not seem kosher? Do people like separating the two? My friend Stuti asked a great question: Does being desi play a seminal role in people’s professional lives?
- My friend Todd noted that desis are not a minority in tech. Maybe the strongest affinity groups are ones where there’s low representation?
- Compared to the Jewish and Black communities that my friends are a part of, I have seen less of a “give back” and “pay it forward” mentality between South Asians.
- Is it possible to start a community without an institution? My friends Raya, Liz, and Kyle did so through the creative futures: “an experiment in community building without an institution.” Does network matter even more when starting a new community, especially if not tied to an institution?
Motivation:
I was raised in a predominantly white community and have always wanted to lean into my South Asian heritage more. I am not particularly religious and didn’t join Indian dance groups in college. So, while I had desi friends at Princeton, I didn’t have a desi community. Inspired by a fun, meaningful, and successful experience co-creating and co-leading a virtual Tech x Social Impact community, I thought hmmm maybe we can recreate that but around a different point of similarity: being desi. Also, during corona I have (like many people reading this post) been more isolated than ever before. Why not try to make new virtual friends? Finally, I learned a lot from the speakers we met in Tech X Social Impact and having a community augmented my learnings. I loved the diverse perspectives each group member brought in their questions (often raising points I hadn’t even considered!) and discussions afterward. Very reminiscent of late-night Forbes d-hall convos :)
My dear friend Ritvik and I banded together to explore creating this community. While we didn’t pursue building it out, I appreciate being able to take a hypothesis-driven approach to building a different sort of community. #a+foreffort?
Proposal:
Phase I: Fall 2020
Goal: Establish a 5–10 member fellowship of passionate desi early in career folk who care deeply about learning about the intersectionality of being desi + changing the world through tech/entrepreneurship.
- Ayushi and Ritvik select 1–2 committed leaders each, who will then reach out to 1–2 others
- This committee will lead the scaling of the initiative
- Will pilot the first cold-emails to leaders for a pilot talk → “See who bites”
- Each person responsible for bringing in one seminar speaker (necessary but not sufficient)
- Community/brand: proud of being desi. We are really inspired by the pride of organizations like NSBU
Invite desi industry leaders and desi influencers to advise and provide insight to how their identity has shaped their path/decisions/vision/passions/etc. A few people we reached out to, grouped by verticals we wanted to learn more about:
Entrepreneurship
Big Tech
- Satya Nadella @ Microsoft (loved his book click here to refresh)
- Sundar Pichai (recently saw him speak @ the congressional hearings)
- Shantanu Narayen, President & CEO, Adobe
- Indra Nooyi @ Pepsi
Media + Business
- Shah rukh khan has created a colossal media empire. How?
Authors
- Chetan Bhagat
- Jhumpa Lahiri
Government
- Ajit Pai, Chairman @ FCC
Athletics
- Sachin Tendulkar, International Cricket Star
Medicine
- Vivek Murthy, former Surgeon General
Phase II: Spring 2021
Goal: meet other like-minded desis, expand the cohort.
We would do this through:
- To get buy-in, create a reciprocity ring
- Creating slack channels to encourage async conversation about Medicine, Tech, Art, Literature, Religion, Dance, Film, and more
Blockers:
- Only one potential speaker replied, and signaled that the shared Princeton bond was why he replied, not being desi. This suggested that our messaging is not compelling and that we need to rethink the value proposition of this for potential speakers.
- Ritvik got a dope gig out in Cali! We needed better traction in order for this to be something worth pursuing (from a strictly time perspective — you only have 24 hours in a day!)
