Sunita Viswanath

Sunita is a co-founder of Sadhana. She was honored by President Obama at the White House in 2015 as a “Champion of Change” for her work with Sadhana. Sunita is also co-founder and Executive Director of Hindus for Human Rights. She has worked for over 30 years in women’s rights and human rights organizations.

In 2001, Sunita co-founded the international women’s human rights organization, Women for Afghan Women (WAW), and served as Board Chair of WAW until January 2022. She has been an advisory board member to Unfreeze Afghanistan since its inception in September 2021, and cofounded Abaad: Afghan Women Forward in August 2022. Sunita has edited "Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future” (Palgrave McMillan, 2003), a book of essays. For her work with WAW, Sunita was awarded the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Global Women’s Rights Award in 2011. In 2021, Sunita was recognized by Center for American Progress as one of 21 “faith leaders to watch.” Previously, Sunita worked with The Sister Fund and the Funders Concerned About AIDS. Sunita is an advisory board member of Population Media Center, which uses entertainment-education and mass media to promote social and cultural change. Sunita is a board member of Dalit Solidarity Forum. Sunita is one of five Hindus appointed to NYC Mayor-Elect Eric Adams’ Faith Transition Team; and the only Hindu in the December 2021 Marquis Who’s Who list of faith-based influencers. Sunita lives in Brooklyn, NY and Taos, NM with her husband Stephan Shaw, their sons Satya, Akash and Gautama, and her parents.

Gautham Reddy

Gautham leads Sadhana’s educational programming and is co-founder of the Chicago chapter. He has brought a progressive Hindu voice to numerous interfaith events and worked to foster conversations in Hindu American communities around the urgent social justice issues of our day. In 2018, he represented Sadhana at the Parliament of World Religions and highlighted some of the complexities of being Hindu in the United States. In the past, he has served as a grassroots organizer on several nationwide faith-based social justice campaigns. Gautham received a PhD from the University of Chicago for his research on Telugu literature and the history of colonial south India. He has also received an MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School focusing on Sanskrit and medieval bhakti narratives. Gautham grew up in the vibrant Hindu community of Minneapolis, Minnesota and now resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

Nikhil mandalaparthy

Nikhil is a writer, organizer, and arts curator who is passionate about the history, religion, and arts of South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. He completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in public policy at the University of Chicago, and currently works with the Aspen Institute’s Inclusive America Project. As a journalist, his writing on South Asian politics and religious has been published in Indian, Pakistani, and international outlets. He also runs an Instagram account called Voices of Bhakti, which showcases poetry on religion, caste, and gender from South Asia in over 30 languages.

Samir durvasula

Samir studied Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University and is currently based in Rockville, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. While serving as a leader in the Hindu and South Asian communities at Cornell University, Samir was inspired by Sadhana’s pillars of ekatva, ahimsa, and seva. It was in this spirit that he began efforts to search for and hire Cornell’s first Hindu chaplain. After graduation, Samir joined Sadhana in 2018. He is driven by the belief in oneness-of-all and the inherent social justice principles within Hinduism. Having learned about Hindu philosophy through Bal Vihar classes, Samir hopes to continue to develop inclusive and progressive Hindu communities in the diaspora, while continuing to strengthen interfaith relationships.

Tahil Sharma

Tahil is an interfaith activist based in Los Angeles who was born to a Hindu father and a Sikh mother. Following the Oak Creek, WI shooting of a Sikh temple in 2012, Tahil became involved in efforts for interfaith literacy and social justice and has been doing this work passionately for the past eight years. He currently serves as Regional Coordinator for North America for the United Religions Initiative.

Shivani Parikh

Shivani Parikh is a J.D. candidate & Stein Scholar for Public Interest and Ethics at Fordham Law. After graduating from Cornell University, she joined the executive committee of MannMukti as Vice President of University Chapters, the masthead of Hyphen Magazine as the News & Politics Editor, the Emerging Leaders Council of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, and as a member of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum’s NYC Chapter. She was selected as an Uprising Fellow with the Just Media Project, for Supermajority’s Education Fund’s 2021 Majority Leaders program, and has been published in South Asian Today, Detester Magazine, Spicy Zine, and Vox: The Highlight. She is most interested in the spiritual path of karma yoga, seva, and ahimsa.

ESHA Khurana

Esha Khurana MD MPH is a first generation Indian-American and physician in mental and physical health who is deeply interested in bringing together Eastern and Western perspectives to reimagine healing and public health. She is especially interested in issues of global health, intergenerational trauma and post-traumatic resilience as it affects refugee, immigrant and other underserved communities. She views narrative arts, social justice, spirituality and community-building as essential to that process. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, writing poetry, watching movies and spending time with friends, family and cats that seem to find her wherever she may go.

Priyanka Srinivasa

Pri is an International Development Specialist and Anthropologist committed to gender justice and peacebuilding. After receiving a B.A from American University and two Master’s degrees from the University of Cambridge and the University of Pittsburgh, she has worked in India, Germany, Denmark, Mexico, Egypt, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Uganda, and the Philippines to implement human rights programming. In 2017, Pri co-founded #iWillGoOut, one of India’s largest protests against gender-based violence. The campaign has since been lauded by UN Women as “One of 12 Hashtags to Follow”. Pri feels passionately about the intersections of Hinduism, feminism, and environmental justice. She continues to build community in India, the United States, and abroad.

Shashank Rao