“Writing and performing with artists and community activists taught me how to connect with my body. Practicing in spiritual spaces taught me how to observe my mind and become aware of my inner journey, while respecting it. Both experiences have shaped my work and commitment to community care + healing and transformational leadership.”
I’m a first generation immigrant and social justice runs in my bloodline.
I was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Like many immigrant identifying folx, my story started off as one of survival and fortitude. My ancestors, including my parents, lived through the Bangladeshi Liberation War - a period of bloodshed and violence that led to the birth of a new nation. I am the daughter of parents who were deeply involved in the Liberation Movement, and the granddaughter of grandparents who were educators and activists. The school my late grandfather built for young girls in our ancestral village still stands today.
These pivotal experiences shape and fuel my lifelong passion for equity, belonging, and justice. I grew up listening to patriotic songs on my father’s cassette player, stories from the revolution, and Peter Jennings’ Nightly News on our TV set. I wanted to understand the world at a young age, and I wanted to be of service to humanity.
Growing up in a working class community in Sunset Park, Brooklyn with my three siblings taught me much about the complexities of life. I was a curious child with a growing imagination, learning from books at the local library, from my parent’s English and science lessons everyday after school, and from the deeply rich cultural histories of the Latinx and Asian communities we grew up in. It helped me develop a love for understanding and connecting with others. A sense of curiosity and empathy that slowly grew into a powerful intuition about people and their deepest needs.
At the same time, I learned how to navigate chaos, intergenerational trauma, anger, and loss in my family network. It allowed me to understand the full spectrum of the human experience - joy, longing, suffering, belonging, trauma, pain, grief, love, connection - as a witness and spaceholder. It also shaped my ability to be a navigator of multiple journeys and experiences.
“Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
— John O’Donahue, “For A New Beginning”
I’m a multipotentialite* with a nonlinear journey.
This path led to exhaustion, depression, and chronic anxiety. When I turned to healing modalities and communities for wisdom and guidance, things began to shift for me. After I returned to the United States from an 11 month long fellowship in West Bengal, India with the American India Foundation in 2012, I explored contemplative practices and spent time in Buddhist spaces with other folx in their late twenties who questioned their career paths.
I found healing in safe spaces through community gatherings (sangha) at New York Insight Meditation Center, especially because they were donation based. Before I had access to therapy, I found healing and community in contemplative spaces. In the years that followed, I participated in 10 day silent meditation retreats, learning about the concepts such as interdependence, impermanence, and non-attachment through readings and dharma teachings (read more about my journey here). I explored and became certified in Reiki and mindfulness meditation, and incorporated these practices in my own self-healing journey. To support my growth, I accessed BIPOC centered communities, tools, resources and practices. I grew empowered by the stunning guidance of Black Buddhist teachers like Ruth King, Lama Rod Owens, and Reverend angel Kyodo Williams, among many others.
Through moments of stillness and contemplation on my cushion after long days at the workplace, I questioned the roles I was supposed to play quietly - roles assigned to me from family conditioning and a system rooted in white supremacy. Following the election outcomes in 2016, I resigned from a senior level role at a global social impact startup that left me depleted to pursue my creative path - a path I longed for but didn’t think I was ready for. I joined feminist artist collectives and wrote as well as performed poetic pieces on my mental health journey as an immigrant-identifying woman of color. I tapped into my love for writing and released a newsletter for a growing community of readers interested in healing, the human spirit, poetry, and living a purposeful life.
Working alongside artists taught me how to connect with my body. Practicing in spiritual spaces taught me how to observe my mind. These experiences would later shape my journey as an entrepreneur and transformational coach.
*A multipotentialite is someone with many interests, many jobs over a lifetime, and many interlocking potentials (source)
I’m a transformational leadership coach, a cultural worker, facilitator, and healer. To get to this point in my life, I needed to experiment and interrogate systems and beliefs that were more traditional and linear. Namely, the idea that we need to follow one career path, have one true calling, and commit to doing one great thing and devote our life to it.
At the start of my professional path nearly two decades ago, I knew I always wanted to work in the international human rights space after majoring in Political Science and Human Rights at Barnard College, Columbia University. At Barnard, we were trained to always ask questions and were were encouraged to be curious and analyze. In fact, the questions were sometimes more important than the answers. And I think that’s why I questioned business practices that seemed inequitable and unfair quite early in my career, as early as 2008: years before Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) strategies, workplace culture dynamics, and mental health were topics of importance as deeply as they are today.
I also think I was hyper attuned to the harmful impact of toxic management because I grew up in a chaotic home and I learned how to develop coping mechanisms to survive. At the same time, because I was taught to be grateful to have employment and to do everything in my power to climb the ladder (due to my immigrant upbringing), I would often disregard my own needs for the sake of the mission. Many of us in the nonprofit industry understand this deeply.
At the same time, my experience in the nonprofit space helped me define the kind of leader I wanted to be and my core values. I’ve worked closely with social justice organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and social impact driven nonprofits and companies since 2003, building their capacity in strategic communications, anti-racism work, program development, and fundraising + business development, both locally, nationally, and globally. I’ve held leadership roles and hired and led teams to amplify an organization’s brand and messaging, leading to increased funding and deeper impact. I’ve advised Executive Directors and Founders, often as the only BIPOC woman in a leadership role. I learned how to climb the corporate ladder by being a high achieving leader and a “good, hard worker” while experiencing institutional oppression.
I’m interested in creating an ecosystem of care, belonging, joy, and safety for historically marginalized folx.
But many of the coaching programs I discovered in my research were focused on “surface level” skills needs, like building confidence to overcome imposter syndrome and prioritizing one’s self care to overcome burnout. I wasn’t connecting with these offerings and I wasn’t sure why. In retrospect, I realized that many of the coaches I came across centered their narrative around the idea that there was something inherently wrong with the client. Low self confidence? Let’s fix it. Too stressed to meditate? We can work on that. Coaching programs make millions using this strategy: focusing on the “you’re not enough and I can help fix you” story. It capitalizes on the suffering of others, deepening the harm rather than healing. It also perpetuates the idea that people, especially BIPOC people, create their own suffering by not doing enough or being enough…when the reality is that we are operating in an oppressive system that is built to diminish our very existence: our values, our accomplishments, our stories, our hopes and dreams.
So when I couldn’t find a coaching program that centered a different narrative - one that encourages our wholeness, centers our joy, and centers collective healing and liberation - I created one. I was fortunate to have two coaches and healers guide me (Carissa Begonia and Anna Davila) as I slowly built the Liberation Journey Coaching Framework - a culmination of two decades of teachings and learnings.
My primary work right now is focused on supporting historically excluded leaders and communities access the freedom to become more self aware and self responsive daily so they lead more whole, boundaried, and loving lives.
I launched The Aranya Project (formerly In Full Bloom Coaching) at the height of the pandemic. I started a new job in 2020 in the AI for social impact space. As much as I loved the mission, I felt triggered and grew increasingly angry and tired of microagressions, as well as a lack of belonging and community care at the workplace. Similar sentiments were shared by other BIPOC colleagues. I had shared Tema Okun’s “White Supremacy Culture” with a number of nonprofit EDs since coming across it in 2018. When we formed an anti-racism steering committee at the AI for social impact organization, I reshared the workbook with our operations team and pointed out business practices that needed to be interrogated.
One of the resources they offered new employees was a training for social justice and education equity organization staff members led by The Management Center called Working for Change. The course helped increase my self advocacy skills during 1:1s with my manager: skills necessary at any job and workplace. I realized that I needed more personalized leadership coaching, especially if I wanted to be on track for a promotion and title bump.
