Dr. Ryan Baidya and Dr. Anjali Kanojia are authors of the upcoming book, She Is... 

Although it has not yet been released, their book looks into the abuses of women from all walks of life and expresses their silenced voices through storytelling and vivid illustrations from a friend who is an artist in India.

Much of Anjali’s perspective is cultivated in her devout practice of yoga. She shared, “What we see as something alternative is mainstream for many people in the world. That is yoga including meditation. Many people think that yoga is just a physical-based exercise, and it’s not. We know that there are tons of scientific-based studies which have shown the impact of yoga therapies on people. Whether it be cancer patients or stroke patients. All of that combined is what the world knows as yoga. I think it helps tremendously and my role is to make sure that we bring the correct form to light.

Both Ryan and Anjali share humanitarian beliefs and the positive progression of mankind. Professor Baidya has worked extensively in Biopharma. These days, he mainly acts as a mentor for start-up companies in Silicon Valley and Japan. He thinks that some entrepreneurs do indeed have a higher vision for changing the world through innovation. 

Much of our conversation focused on Ryan and Anjali’s work on their book, She Is. The project memorializes the experiences and suffering of women in the present time. The suffering has been going on for a long time. They mentioned the bravery and courage of the women they worked within coming out and sharing their voices. Anjali says, “Bringing in aspects about female empowerment and harmony, understanding that each of us has feminine and masculine characteristics. Bringing in the thought that things did not always use to be so bad for women. Women were always revered as goddesses. What happened over time?” Their works focus on the difficulty of the story and sharing these female voices while still providing some sort of positive outlook. 

They shared quite a touching story surrounding the journey of their dear artist friend in India and his illustrative homage to women. The man who would later become an amazing artist became homeless in Indian in the late ’80s. He was starving and lost his will to live. The working women picked him up and took him to their house and fed him. The women of the night took this man in and helped him regain his livelihood. In an ode to the charitable women that helped him years ago, he uses paper to craft empowering examples of women. 

Anjali referred to Ryan as a mentor at one point during our discussion. His wisdom was very apparent and it was obvious that much of his faith was instilled in the younger generation. Professor Baidya shared, “My view is that we are actually in a very difficult position right now at this moment. Everyone from the young generation to the people in power has to come together and make policy decisions in the US to influence the rest of the world. The younger generation will be the owner of these decisions. The role for the young generation is to speak out now before it is too late.”

Ryan and Anjali make it their mission to inspire change and give their example of doing so by giving a voice to suffering women around the world. 

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