South Asian Trailblazers

In Episode 5, Simi welcomes Rooshy Roy to Trailblazers. Rooshy is Co-founder and CEO of Aavrani. Aavrani is a premium skincare brand for women, inspired by ancient Indian beauty traditions and rituals. She co-founded Aavrani in 2017 while at Wharton, after spending a number of years in finance. To date, the company has raised upwards of $2 million in funding. In the last several months, she not only launched Aavrani 2.0, but also was named a Forbes 30 under 30.

Rooshy gets candid in this conversation. She shares her triumphs and her challenges -- from a chance meeting with her now co-founder to navigating a complex relationship with her brand, and by proxy, her heritage. She delineates what it means to be Founder versus a CEO, and what it means to infuse a piece of yourself into your work, every step of the way. Ultimately, this episode is a leadership crash course from a trailblazing South Asian woman intent on making South Asian beauty the next big thing.

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Nandini Jammi, brand safety expert and digital advertising activist, visits the pod. In 2016, she co-founded Sleeping Giants, a social media campaign that alerts companies about how their ad placements might fund hate speech. Within one year, the campaign's efforts resulted in a 90 percent drop in Breitbart News’ ad revenue. Since then, she has led campaigns that have convinced advertisers to flee outlets like The O’Reilly Factor and spearheaded efforts to de-platform problematic white nationalists. In June 2020, she launched Check My Ads to help brands understand and redirect their digital media spend.

You might remember Nandini from our first issue, which highlighted a piece in which she reclaims the narrative around her co-founding of Sleeping Giants. In this episode, she shares her story in vivid color -- from the propagation of misinformation to advice for women at risk of being erased from entire movements they've built. In a world where The Social Dilemma is the new norm, this is an episode you can't miss. Nandini is a trailblazer, pioneering the path forward in ad-tech and for women everywhere.

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Simi catches up with Sujata Day, actress-model-screenwriter-director extraordinaire. She is best known for her starring role as CeCe in Issa Rae’s series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and her role on HBO’s Insecure. Over the course of her career, she’s appeared in an array of TV shows from Greek to The Secret Life of the American Teenager. In 2017, she produced and sold a short film titled Cowboy and Indian. More recently, she directed her first film, Definition Please, a South Asian dramedy about a former spelling bee champ.

In this episode, Sujata sheds light on how she first paved her path to Hollywood, from her early cameos on iconic shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer to her starring roles. She underscores the challenges she faced as a South Asian woman in the industry, and how those same experiences inspired her to tell her brown girl story. Listen in to hear hers -- it's powerful and telling of where South Asian representation is headed with women like Day at the helm. 

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Simi sits down with Sarina Siddhanti and Arian Agrawal, co-founders of Riya Collective. Riya Collective is a YC-backed social shopping platform where customers can buy and consign clothing and goods from around the world, starting with Desi products. Riya Collective has been featured in Vogue and has raised $2.2 million to date. 

Sarina and Arian are college classmates turned serial entrepreneurs who always knew they wanted to be in business together. In this episode, they share their experiences launching Riya from their living room and navigating headwinds brought on by the pandemic. They discuss innovating by and for South Asians, and the ways in which they found and maintained conviction in their ideas. Tune in to hear their inspired vision for the platform -- with these two at the helm, the future looks bright. 

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

In our inaugural episode, Simi catches up with Sopan Deb, a journalist for the New York Times. Previously, he covered Donald Trump's presidential campaign for CBS. His work has appeared on The Boston Globe, Al Jazeera, NBC News, and other prominent news outlets. Sopan recently published his first book, Missed Translations: Meeting The Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me, which recounts a poignant reunion with his estranged parents. In this conversation, they leave no stone unturned: from the inspiration behind the book to the South Asian creatives that have inspired him. Sopan shares his journey to journalism and political intersections in the NBA and the... SpongeBob musical. Yes, you read that right -- you don't want to miss this episode.

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Welcome to Trailblazers! In this trailer, we introduce our new podcast.

Trailblazers dives deep into the journeys of trailblazing South Asians, sharing the stories of the leaders and dreamers lighting the way across the Diaspora and beyond.  

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.