My Story

My work examines global health through the lens of power and access, informed by training as a clinician and public health researcher, and field work across hospitals in the U.S., rural Nepal, India, and with at-risk youth in San Francisco. The trajectory began when I was fifteen, on a flight into Mumbai. From the window seat, I pressed my face to the glass, mistaking the expanse below for a forest. “Those aren’t trees,” my father said. “They’re slums.” Hours later, from our hotel room , I watched women and children in the open sewers outside. I saw and felt privilege and deprivation—separated only by glass.

That moment connected to something deeper in my family's story. My grandparents fled Lahore, Punjab, during Partition, arriving in Old Delhi with seven children and starting over from nothing. Higher education didn’t reach us until the third generation—today my extended family spans universities and professions that my grandparents sacrificed everything to make possible. I learned early what access can unlock when barriers finally fall. My mother embodied that conviction. She put herself through school against considerable odds and reminded me often: “Education is the one weapon no one can take from you.” While I was training as a pharmacist, she was fighting leukemia. I divided my time between the hospital and exam prep, and she refused to let me consider giving up. She insisted I finish, and that resolve continues to fuel my work.

Those lessons carried me into the field—designing digital farming networks to bring internet access and climate-smart agriculture to women in Nepal’s Dolakha district, developing menstrual health programs in India, and launching entrepreneurial training for at-risk youth in San Francisco. Each project reinforced what experience had already taught me: that health is inseparable from economics, education, and power. Today, those experiences inform my approach to narrative: reporting on health, equity, technology, and the systems that define how people live—and who is left behind.