SAJA's 25th Anniversary Conference

During the spring of 1994, in the backroom of restaurant in New York called Lancers, four South Asian journalists brought together 18 other journalists of South Asian origin in the hopes of finding and building a community for themselves. Fast forward 25 years, and SAJA now connects more than 1,000 journalists all over North America. "It serves as a network for education, inspiration and training South-Asian journalists in America and those covering South Asia and South Asian diaspora."

Photo: Jay Mandal

SAADA was honored to partner with the South Asian Journalists Association for their 25th anniversary annual conference. We collected stories from first time attendees all the way to those who were at the very first SAJA meeting. Leading journalists, promising writers, influential editors, and more shared their reflections about SAJA's impact on the journalism profession and the media landscape for South Asian Americans as a whole. Listen to their interviews below.


Storytellers included: Ajay Mehta, Ambreen Ali, Anusha Shrivastava, David Wallis, Harsha Nahata, Jay Mandal, John Laxmi, Lakshmi Gandhi, Leonard Gordon, Mallika Rao, Meghna Rao, Parita Desai, Prabha Natarajan, Prerana Thakurdesai, Rahul Bali, S. Mitra Kalita, Sarah Khan, Snigdha Sur, Sree Sreenivasan, Stephen Jiwanmall, Tania Rashid, Vinamrata Chaturvedi, and Yoshita Singh

Interviewers: Christine Calvo, Samip Mallick, and Maryam Ahmed