Brandeis Alumni, Family and Friends

Between the cost of instruments, education, and other hidden costs, playing music often comes with a high barrier to entry. Given the racial wealth gap in the United States, that barrier is also on average higher for people of color. 

Emily Eng ’14 co-founded Lift Music Fund to address that inequality. 

“As an Asian conductor, in the world that I live in, I have experienced that feeling of, wow, there’s no one around me who looks like me,” she says. “We want to make music more affordable and more accessible to music students, mostly from underrepresented populations.” 

Lift differs from other scholarship organizations, she says, in that they focus on helping BIPOC student musicians afford “the incidental and hidden costs” associated with music, including instruments, equipment, and lessons – many of the things that prevent people from exploring music study at all. 

How did Lift come together?

We had this kind of silent space with Covid, which just allowed so many of us to think and reflect on what was important in life. As a musician, our work was just paused. It was so strange, because so much of what I do is with a group of people, making music collaboratively. So it was a great opportunity for us to think about what we can do to make our world of music reflect the society we want to see at large. At the same time, we had the loudness of the call for racial justice in our country. Classical music is a very expensive endeavor. So the purpose of Lift Music Fund was to provide a tangible way to help minority students access the things they need for educational growth, like private lessons, equipment, travel to festivals. 

You mentioned the loudness of the call for racial justice in this country, so that gets at this, but what inspires you to do this work?

As a female-identifying conductor, as an Asian conductor, especially in the world that I live in, in band music, I have experienced the feeling of, “Wow, there’s no one around me who looks like me.” That kind of drives me personally. My role as a conductor is to also make an environment inclusive for all, in the rehearsal room, but then also I want to have an impact in our field at large.

What kind of impact do you hope this work has on the field at large?

If we’re speaking just in terms of classical music, historically the audiences are older, they’re whiter. To have classical music live on in our society, it’s important for it to evolve, for it to have musicians who are incorporating their own stories. The goal is also to have more new music. I mean, the MET has said they’re going to play pretty much all contemporary opera now, which is really exciting. I think you’re seeing a shift. There’s less looking back at the revered traditions. Those are still valuable, of course. Everyone still enjoys hearing Beethoven, but I think it can be a more balanced mix.

What is your hope for the future of Lift Music Fund?

Like many mission-driven organizations, my hope is it’s no longer needed at some point. That’s what every nonprofit hopes for. But for now, the hope is to be able to grow to a place where we can continue to do monthly microgrants and fund some of the larger cost barriers, like festival and tuition expenses, and instrument purchases, and that sort of thing, providing a wider scale of financial support.

What was the most valuable thing you learned at Brandeis that has helped guide you to your career at this point?

There’s an example sticking out in my mind and it’s just ringing so loudly that I can’t not say it. When I was an undergrad, I studied with David Rakowski. I studied composition with him, and I wasn’t sure at that point if composition was a space for me. In some ways, I didn’t feel comfortable in the community, mostly because a lot of the new music that was being written wasn’t very tonal, it wasn’t always easy to listen to. I just remember David telling me that it was ok for composition to feel familiar, for something to be an earworm. That feeling of support, to be comfortable and own my own voice and my own sensibilities helped me find my way in the world a little bit.

Do you have any professional or life advice you would share with current students or young alumni interested in a career in mission-driven work or music, or both?

Don’t let your ideas just sit silently inside yourself. There will be people who are eager about the same causes that you are. So don’t be afraid to take that step and just really put something into action. When you’re starting something new, you can be worried that whatever step you’re going to take is the wrong one, and that can actually prevent you from taking that step at all. But trial by error is sometimes the best way to go about it. And it’s definitely the right way to go about it in music. That’s the only way to truly be creative, to take risks.

Jackson Holbert ’17 recently released his first book of poetry, a collection that largely examines the opioid crisis in eastern Washington, his original home. 

Entitled “Winter Stranger,” the book won the 2022 Max Ritvo Prize, ensuring its publication by Milkweed Editions. Holbert’s work has previously been published in Poetry, The Nation, Colorado Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, The Iowa Review, as well as multiple editions of Best New Poets. 

Currently, he’s a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where he studies and is hard at work on his next collection. 

Can you tell us about your first book and what else you’re working on?

It’s a lot about the opioid crisis in rural, eastern Washington. It’s also about World War One and the relationship between violence and landscape. My work as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford has mainly been centered around research since my next work is going to be pretty historically based. I’ve also been working on some secondary projects, a graphic novel about Marie Curie and a nonfiction book that’s going very slowly.

What inspires you creatively?

For me, writing has always been a very physical act. I feel something physically in my body when I feel like I am ready to write a poem and then I know that poem is done when that feeling has dissipated. Early on when I was at Brandeis, I felt poems a lot in my shoulders for some reason. And then I would write and write and write and eventually that tension would sort of dissipate and that would be when I knew that I had done what I could with the poem. 

What in your mind makes for good writing and good poetry?

The primary thing with all good writing is concision. No artist wants someone to feel like they’ve wasted their time when they’ve experienced your work. So, not taking up any more time than you absolutely have to is paramount to me. When it comes to good poems, I don’t really know. I can say what I like and don’t like. Some poems you love in a clear way—you can say this line means this, which makes me feel this. Some poems you love but can’t even come close to saying why. Those tend to interest me a bit more, especially as I get older, because some of them do become clearer to you over time. I used to think that to love a poem you had to understand it—there’s nothing further from the truth.

Do you ever feel that in your own writing? Maybe you’re not sure exactly what you’re trying to say, but it feels right and you’re just trying to follow that?

Yeah that’s exclusively how I write. I will write out a very messy and long first draft. I always try to overwrite and get everything I can on the page, then cut it back bit by bit. But I will just sit up all night and then read the work out loud over and over again. There are some poems that take me years to write. So I’ll sit up and read it and slowly get a sense of the entire sound, and then cut back bit by bit until, essentially, I don’t think there’s anything more I can do. There’s a poem in my forthcoming book that started as an 8 page poem and, after about 60 hours of reading it aloud, turned into a 22 line poem. That’s almost 3 hours a line! But it’s all worth it, all of it. You’re always learning something when you’re writing or revising—even if it takes years for that knowledge you’ve gained to become visible.

What was your Brandeis experience like?

I went to Brandeis knowing that all I wanted to do was Creative Writing. The first poetry class I took at Brandeis—which was also the first poetry class I had taken ever—was taught by Liz Bradfield. I’d read Liz’s work and loved it, but I had no idea what people actually do in a creative writing workshop. I lucked out. Liz is an extraordinarily talented teacher. The students in that class were brilliant as well—brilliant people, brilliant poets. One of my closest friends in the world, Emily Duggan, was in that class, along with multiple other poets who ended up publishing their work in journals and books.

My second Brandeis Creative Writing class was with Olga Broumas, who is emeritus poetry faculty now. She retired after the end of my first year but continued to meet with me about poems every week until I graduated, which is one of the most generous things anyone has ever done for me. I wouldn’t be the poet or person I am today if it wasn’t for both Liz and Olga.

And of course, the English department too was really great. If you want to be a reasonably good poet, you have to be a very, very good reader and the English department set me up incredibly well. I learned so much from Billy Flesch, Laura Quinney, and then John Burt. I’m sure I’m forgetting others. They showed me what it’s like to be passionate about all literature, and how much joy that passion can bring you.

Do you have any professional advice for younger people pursuing creative writing as a profession?

Reading is the big thing, and all reading is preparing you to write something. That doesn’t mean you have to read poems five hours a day every day, but just the act of reading is going to teach you things about writing. Every good writer has been a devoted reader. If you can find a supportive group of friends or people you trust, whose judgment and taste you trust, to read your work, that’s really helpful too. One of the greatest gifts Brandeis gave me was a group of friends who I trust to read my work and give me honest feedback.

Iyvon E. ’13 is a New York City-based theater producer, dramaturg, and artistic programmer. 

She is the founder of The Parsnip Ship, a play development company originally focused on audio storytelling, but now expanding to other forms of storytelling and play development.

As the Director of Artistic Programs at Signature Theatre Company, she works to curate and cultivate free artistic programming in the organization’s open, public lobby called SigSpace and leads LaunchPad, Signature’s newest residency program for early career playwrights. 

Can you tell us a little about your work both at Signature Theater Company and with The Parsnip Ship?

At Signature, my focus is on producing and curation, talking and meeting with artists, going to shows, to see artists and their work, and just keeping a general good pulse on what’s happening in New York City. I’m keeping up with everything from music to drag to late-night comedy to theater. I’m reading plays, talking with writers about script development, and how I can be of artistic support. Then I’m also cultivating free programming for the community. With Parsnip, it’s a lot of the same with a focus in audio storytelling, but, I’m looking at things more from 80,000 feet in the air since we’re a smaller team. I really believe that the arts belong to the people. Trying to make, produce, and curate art that reflects that, that is very much a joy of mine.

What was your inspiration for launching The Parsnip Ship?

I have always enjoyed the act of gathering people. Gathering people to hear a story is one of the few things that binds us all. It’s universal. With The Parsnip Ship, I was very in love with the idea of how, in the time before television became the prominent form of media and entertainment, people used to gather together and listen to stories on the radio, and there’s something about being in a space where you’re all hearing the same story but you’re all probably imagining these little details differently. But all of those ideas and how anyone imagined it, it’s all valid. That was the original motivation and inspiration, but The Parsnip Ship has obviously grown and evolved a lot since then.

You’ve mentioned the importance of accessible and free programming. Can you talk about that?

I grew up in Brooklyn and I was very fortunate to attend Laguardia High School for Performing Arts as a vocal major. I realized at Laguardia how much of theater and music was really inaccessible because it was and still is expensive. I grew up in a family with three sisters and parents who had to figure out how to pay for things for four girls. So I didn’t go to see Broadway shows growing up, really. I probably only saw three up until I graduated from Brandeis. I definitely grew up believing, if it was on Broadway it was the best of the best, and that I’ve learned is just not the case at all.  But now I see shows all the time, from, like, off-off-off-off-Broadway to Broadway. And you see how the prices really range and the quality also ranges and differs. So I want to bring incredible stories and amazing storytelling to wider audiences in a way that either removes or lowers the barrier of entry.

What was your Brandeis experience like?

I’m really grateful for my time there. I made lifelong friends. One of the reasons I chose Brandeis, coming from New York City, was that I honestly wanted a smaller campus. I wanted to know what it felt like to have this walkable home base. Going to a school in New York would’ve felt more dispersed, and I don’t know if those bonds I made would have been as deep as the ones I made with my Brandeis friends. I actually live with a Brandeisan who is one of my sorority sisters. And I see Brandeis people all the time. Three of the people who work on Parsnip Ship are from Brandeis. Brandeis runs deep for me in my day to day.

Do you have any professional or life advice for younger alumni or students who might be interested in pursuing a career in the arts or in theater in particular?

Working in the arts is definitely a “who you know” industry as much as “what you know.” So networking is important. Always be curious about people, their stories, and their talents. Because this industry is all about people. Make sure you know you are connecting with people as much as possible, because they could be your future peers, colleagues, interns, whatever. 

As executive director of the Student Clinic for Immigrant Justice, Jonathan Goldman ’19 works to train college students to provide pro bono legal support to asylum seekers and organize for immigrant justice

Currently, the organization serves three communities: Worcester and Boston in Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island. The clinic partners with various schools in these cities to give students hands-on experience in community organizing and immigration law. 

Previously, he co-founded The Right to Immigration Institute (TRII) and was one of the youngest elected members of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee. 

What inspired you to pursue this kind of work?

My journey really begins with where I was born, in Levring, Denmark, a small town with a population of maybe 60 people on a good day. We moved to the U.S. when I was about two years old to a small hippie community in Maryland, and grew up in an environment of co-housing, of consensus decision-making, of pooled resources, of people eating meals together seven days of the week. That influenced my values, my sense of justice. Contrasting my own experience of coming to the U.S. with the experience of other immigrants is what really primed me to get involved in this work. 

How did you first get involved?

During the fall semester of my second year at Brandeis, I was taking Professor Doug Smith’s course, Immigration and Human Rights. One of my good friends, Victoria St. Jean, had taken the class before and invited me to be a part of a conversation with her, Professor Smith, and Munis Safaiou ’16 about getting college students involved in providing free legal services to immigrants. The course required a capstone project and Victoria suggested this conversation could be a part of my semester-long project. We came together and thought, let’s see where it goes. Fast forward, by the timeI graduated, we had this full-fledged non-profit organization, The Right to Immigration Institute, with a team of dozens of students.

Do you see any added urgency to the work that you do given how fraught the issue of immigration is, particularly as viewed through a political lens?

Absolutely, especially in the asylum work that we do. The outcome of these cases, and it's not even hyperbolic to say this, is life or death for many people. Political asylum is a form of relief for people who are fleeing persecution based on something they cannot or should not be expected to change about themselves, things like race, nationality, political opinion. When we're working on cases, it really can be a difference in the outcome of someone's life. 

What makes you hopeful for the future as it relates to immigration justice? Are there any signs that you're optimistic about, that we're trending in the right direction?

One thing that makes me particularly optimistic is the level of coalition and coordination that is happening within the immigration world. If we look over the past 20 years, there was a lot of coordination that was happening with DACA, obviously, when that was first being pushed. That enthusiasm was renewed when President Trump was in office, and it has had lasting effects on our collective work. But one of the biggest things that gives me hope is that the conversation has moved beyond just being about resiliency. Resiliency is often just doing whatever it takes to survive. We know immigrant communities are resilient, but we want to think about how we create a world where immigrants will be able to thrive in this country. 

Can you explain a little bit about what your Brandeis experience was like? 

One of my favorite parts about Brandeis was how all the faculty, and even the way the classes were structured, supported creativity. There was always a lot of encouragement to your learning beyond the classroom, whether that’s in research, volunteering, clubs, or things like that, it's that flexibility. That’s evident in the creation of the Right to Immigration Institute. We had a ton of students getting involved, but we also had different staff reach out to us and ask, “How can we support you?” 

What professional or life advice would you have for someone who’s maybe at the start of their career and interested in exploring the field of work that you’re in? 

I would say it’s important to know why you’re invested in a given issue, especially for people who want to get into the very taxing and complex work of social change. When you're out there, and you're working a 12-hour day, and you're hearing story after story, and you're feeling like the entire system is against you, it’s good to return to the question: “Why am I here?” For me, I feel this clarity of my experience having been born in Denmark and growing up in the U.S. combined with my experiences in Massachusetts and being at Brandeis, I feel a strong clarity surrounding my “Why.” 

As the director of Artist and Repertoire at Nigeria’s Mavin Records, Rima Tahini ’16 oversees the label’s roster of artists, helping to launch artists from scratch, developing their brands, sound, visual identity, social media presence, and performance opportunities. 

These artists include superstars like Rema and Ayra Starr, whose top hits have been streamed on Spotify hundreds of millions of times, while their collective stream counts stretch into the billions. 

That means, even without an instrument, Tahini is playing an instrumental role in shaping the landscape of popular music in Africa, and the wider world, as the Afrobeat genre gains in popularity beyond the continent.

As her own star has risen, Tahini has also been quick to give back to her community. 

In October, the African Leadership Academy (ALA), which she attended, launched the Rima Tahini artist residency fund. The fund provides a beneficiary with the opportunity to shadow Tahini at work and learn the ins and outs of artist development and management. 

Can you walk us through what your work entails and how many artists you’re working with?

We have a roster of ten artists and I work on the music that they put out and everything in their visual world. We oversee release dates, music videos, strategizing what their branding looks like. What is the artist’s plan for the year? What are their next steps, the next growth phase? There’s a lot of artist development and creation and also brand building and strategy that goes into it. So far I’ve worked to launch six artists with Mavin since 2019. 

How’d you come into this work?

After I graduated from Brandeis, I moved to Washington, D.C. to work with a venture capital company called Kupanda Capital. While there I started doing research in the media and music space in Africa because I always wanted to come back. I'm from Sierra Leone, West Africa, so this really is home, and I grew up on Afrobeat music. I’ve always wanted to somehow contribute to culture on the continent and create value. Kupanda investments are all in Africa or are Africa facing, and we ended up investing in Mavin in 2018. But I moved to Lagos in 2017, to do my due diligence with the company. I’ve gone through different phases with the company, from the investment side, to now the A&R and product side, over the last six years. 

You mentioned you always wanted to make a contribution on the continent, can you talk about that?

I’ve always wanted to create economic value, create things that employ people, and make people’s lives better. But also I’ve always wanted to work with young people and help people actualize their potential. I didn’t think that that was going to be in music, to be honest. As I was finding my way, I thought I might work in education or in investment, helping growing businesses. . I’ve also been interested in lifestyle – restaurants, spas, so I thought maybe there, too. But then, when I started working with artists, I learned it was about so much more than music and creativity, but about people, and helping people achieve their dreams. That’s the most fulfilling and exciting part. 

What’s the musical landscape like in Africa, and what’s your hope for the future of the industry?

Afrobeats as a genre has been growing and gaining ground at home and abroad for a while now. Outside of Africa, the sound was largely championed and consumed by the African diaspora across Europe and America. As a non-African, if you’ve heard an Afrobeats song or knew of an African artist, you most likely knew someone from Africa. It is truly in the last three years or so that we started seeing the genre really begin to stick, and we can safely say with songs like “Essence,” “Love Nwantiti,” “Last Last,” and “Calm Down,” Afrobeats is seeping it’s way into pop culture and gaining space in pop music across the world. My hope is we’re not a moment, not a phase, but that we’re building lasting infrastructure for our industry, on our continent, so we’re not relying on Western collaborations to make money and value for our industry.

How did the Rima Tahini artist residency fund come about? 

I’m an alumna of African Leadership Academy. That school was very pivotal in my life and in my career. That’s how I got to Brandeis. That’s how I got to Kupanda. They’re a lifelong engagement school, not just a high school. I always wanted to give back. Now I’m able to give opportunities to people who want to work in a creative space, and ALA developed this aid for the arts program to really support students who are interested in creative space. Working with Kupanda, they helped to set it up because they knew I really wanted to do this. 

What was your Brandeis experience like?

It was amazing. I loved the size of Brandeis because I’ve never wanted to go to a big school, because I didn’t want to feel tiny, like a small person in this huge place. As a student, you get a lot of attention from your professors, your peers. I always felt really at home at Brandeis. It was a phenomenal experience for me. Being part of the African student organization at Brandeis, the friends that I made, the memories, I think those are the things that really stick with me. It’s an amazing school

Sam Hyun, Heller MBA’22, MPP’22, serves as the director of federal relations under Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. In the role, he acts as a liaison between Wu’s cabinet and the federal government, representing and advocating for the city’s needs and priorities to White House partners and congressional leaders.

Prior, he’d worked for five years as a legislative aide for Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo, eventually overseeing the Speaker’s foreign affairs portfolio, arranging visits from dignitaries like the prime minister of Vietnam and former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon.

Outside his political work, Hyun is also the co-founder of 1587, a sneaker company that celebrates Asian culture and fashion. 

What inspires you to do the work you do?

For a long time, Asian Americans, we've been really boxed in, with rigid definitions of who we are, what we can be, and what our possibilities are in this country. Part of what drives me is breaking that mold, breaking those bamboo ceilings, and not just for myself, but to be an example for others. I think it’s important that we are leading by example, but I think what’s most important is laying down a foundation for future generations.

Can you talk a bit more about representation in politics and the importance of amplifying underrepresented voices?

In my 9 to 5, I’m literally serving under one of the most prominent Asian American politicians in the country. Outside of that though, I want to encourage other folks to run, to build that pipeline, and encourage other Asian Americans to enter the political arena, as staffers and on the campaign side. Regardless of a person’s background, this thinking is ultimately about opening up possibilities for people who have previously not been engaged. 

Do you have any advice for current students or young alumni who might be interested in getting into politics or public service in general?

We often get lost in theory and ideology and white papers and aren’t spending time in communities. So if you’re going to go into public service, be very sure that you are connected and rooted in community first and foremost, that you understand the heartbeat of what drives your community, and that you have relationships with people. It’s really easy to get lost in very grasstops thinking, which can have unintended consequences because you’re not thinking about and don’t have any relationships at the grassroots. So community is absolutely, critically important. Build relationships and show humility. 

Given the urgency of the political moment, can you expound a little bit on why that grassroots work is so important?

A lot of people really overlook the impact of local government, whether that’s city council, the school committee, or even just your ward committees. We’re seeing what happens when people no longer put value and importance on those roles, and how that erodes the infrastructure of this country. It may seem like not a big deal when it’s just your own local neighborhood, but when it starts multiplying and those cracks start to show all across the country, inside and out, then you really start to see it as a whole on a macro level. We each carry a vote. We had an election in Boston not too long ago where a city counselor at large won with a single vote. And so every person matters. It’s important that we all contribute and it’s also important that we pay attention and are educated on the issues and do our best to contribute in all the ways we can.

What was your Brandeis experience like?

Heller really changed my life in many ways. I had spent almost five years working in government prior, and that gave me a lot of real-life experience in the political arena. But Heller really gave me a lot of the quantitative skills that were really critical. I think just networking with and getting to know the thought leaders at Heller – not just professors, but my peers, the alumni – that was invaluable. I’ve already worked with several in my capacity, so I think it gives you a lot of confidence going out into the world, knowing I not only survived Heller, but that I have friends and allies that are out there I can lean on for support. 

Aneil Tripathy ’12, GSAS MA’14, PhD’21 spent more than a decade at Brandeis, arriving as an undergraduate student and then staying to complete a Master’s degree and a PhD. 

Through his years at Brandeis, he was able to take courses in the Graduate School for Arts & Sciences, the International Business School, and the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. This experience, he says, gave him the chance to envision and pursue interdisciplinary work and research for his PhD in anthropology. That work, he says, set the course for his current career as an economic anthropologist focused on climate finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC).

In this role, Tripathy works with research teams across MIT as well as with MCSC member companies that span a wide range of industries. He aids them in addressing climate change and works to figure out how these companies can utilize financial markets to support climate solutions and business transition plans.

Could you explain economic anthropology and what your work in the field entails?

Economic anthropology is about making sense of the human experiences, behaviors, and actions that influence how we utilize the material world to meet our needs. So, it’s about accessing food and shelter, sharing and trading different objects, and the cultural systems that mediate these exchanges. At Brandeis, we’ve had a long history of really cool economic anthropologists, such as Rhoda Halperin. The Society for Economic Anthropology has an award that’s given out every year in her name. Creative and innovative economic anthropological research is also still very active in the department. My PhD supervisor, Professor Elizabeth Ferry, was recently selected as one of two finalists for the Society for Economic Anthropology 2023 Kate Browne Creativity in Research Award for her book with Stephen Ferry, La Batea.

What inspires you to do this work?

The enormity of climate change requires our institutions and the ways in which we interact with our environment to dramatically change. At the same time, there’s a lot of inertia in trying to get this change to occur.  This is both a great challenge and a real opportunity to change the world and our societies to be generally better and also climate resilient. This goal inspires me and keeps me motivated.

What are some of the biggest challenges in getting people moving forward, out of that state of inertia?

A lot of it comes down to making people aware of the severity of climate change, but then also not ending the conversation in hopelessness, given the enormity of the problem we’re dealing with. So, we need to educate and make people aware of why change is needed, but then also engage them in figuring out what strategies could be effective to create change for climate action across all of our social institutions: universities, corporations, governments. In the past, as a result of fossil fuel industry lobbying, part of the environmental movement has focused on individual actions such as calculating your carbon footprint, and that’s all well and good. However, real climate solutions require systemic change. We need to make sure that the right leaders are in the right places to support that level of change.

Are you hopeful for that progress? Pessimistic? 

During my time at Brandeis, I was a member of the 2015 Exploratory Committee on Fossil Fuel Divestment. This got me involved in activism and work in some really inspiring initiatives, such as the Mandel Center Climate Change Working Group and Brandeis Climate Justice. All of this work to try to change Brandeis in response to climate change, was both empowering in seeing how things can shift, but also made me very aware of how long these processes take. I’m always just made hopeful by the change that you do see over time.

What drove your decision to stay at Brandeis through undergrad, graduate, Masters, and PhD programs? Why did you stay here? Why didn’t you pursue other places?

One of the things that was of real value to me was the connections I had within Brandeis’s department of anthropology. What has always excited me about anthropology is the opportunity to do interdisciplinary work with the toolkit that the discipline provides. Unfortunately, in some anthropology departments, people can stay stuck in their discipline. 

I knew that at Brandeis, since I was so familiar with the anthropology department, that they trusted me enough to give me the space to take courses at the Heller School, at the International Business School, to be involved in climate activism. I knew they’d give me a lot more flexibility to do the type of work that I wanted to do. That, I think, would have been much harder for me to do in another university. As an undergraduate at Brandeis, I was also able to do a year abroad at the London School of Economics and Political Science. That greatly influenced my journey into anthropology. 

What advice do you have for students or younger alumni pursuing work in a field similar to your own?

One of the things that was of real value to me was the connections I had within Brandeis’s department of anthropology. What has always excited me about anthropology is the opportunity to do interdisciplinary work with the toolkit that the discipline provides. Unfortunately, in some anthropology departments, people can stay stuck in their discipline, which I think is a shame. 

I knew that at Brandeis, since I was so familiar with the anthropology department, that they trusted me enough to give me the space to take courses at the Heller School, at the International Business School, to be involved in climate activism. I knew they’d give me a lot more flexibility to do the type of work that I wanted to do. That, I think, would have been much harder for me to do in another university. As an undergraduate at Brandeis, I was also able to do a year abroad at the London School of Economics and Political Science, that also greatly influenced my journey into anthropology. 

Ayan Sanyal ’14 is the co-founder of Kolkata Chai Co., a cafe in the East Village of New York City specializing in chai made in authentic Indian traditions. 

Since its 2019 opening, the company has put authentic chai on the map and in the process earned a popular following on social media, with nearly 40,000 followers on Instagram. Sanyal, and his brother and co-founder, Ani, have also appeared on Good Morning America to talk about their process and the importance of celebrating and preserving their heritage. Last summer, they raised $1 million in funding to grow their e-commerce business. The company opened a second physical location in May. 

In all they do, their goal, says Ayan, is to “share the really vibrant and authentic food culture of West Bengal and Kolkata.”

What inspires you to do this work?

Kolkata is the name of the city my parents emigrated from, so it’s a tribute to them in a way. What inspires me is just having grown up in America but between two cultures. There are a lot of other people who have these kinds of diasporic experiences, and building a place and a product for them to feel seen in that respect and be able to kind of merge their two upbringings, that’s what inspires me. We’re merging the Western and the New York City food atmosphere with Kolkata, the actual Chai product, and kind of mashing those two and hopefully getting the best of both worlds.

In what ways are those cross-cultural norms embodied at Kolkata?

Everything we do is for our community. We actually launched an online business back in 2020, which has kind of surpassed what the little shop can do in many ways, and we’re reaching a lot more people nationally now. But we still think maintaining a physical space and having a place for people to gather around is so important. We want to make sure we have a space that offers cultural diversity and different perspectives.

As for the chai itself, when some of the chains introduced their chai tea lattes, a lot of people thought “this is what chai is.” I don’t think it’s malicious, but it’s a misrepresentation. We really wanted to bring that tea, cardamom, and ginger spice profile that you do get on the streets in India. I remember fondly going out for a cup of tea when I was a little kid visiting India and going out for chai and samosas and to hang out. That’s what we really want to authentically represent.

What’s on the horizon for Kolkata that you’re excited about?

For us, the online business has been huge, so we really want to get more into consumer packaged goods and make our authentic chai available to as many people as possible — especially people who maybe aren’t in the New York City or East Coast area. Other than that, we are also opening a second cafe location in New York City, so that’s super exciting. 

What was your Brandeis experience like?

My Brandeis experience was pretty insular for the first two years, and then I was a community advisor my last two years so I met a lot of different people and came out of my shell a little bit. I was very involved in the arts, so I would always be DJing or performing at Chums and in the music clubs and trying to get it poppin’ as they said back then. The community at Brandeis was small enough and open enough that it was really a cool blank slate for my creativity and the burgeoning of my entrepreneurial self, where it was just like, you want to throw a show at Chums and print out posters and try to get people there and make it exciting for your peers? You can go do and try all those things. So I literally looked at it as kind of a playground for my creative and entrepreneurial efforts.

Growing up, Sarah Ackerman ’17 didn’t know many people who had food allergies, and fewer still who had the type of life-threatening allergies she had to peanuts, tree nuts, soy, sesame, legumes, shellfish, and mustard. 

More than limiting her diet, she says her allergies often made her feel lonely, since she couldn’t always enjoy birthday cake at parties, or trick or treating with friends. As she got older, her allergies affected her life in new ways: interfering with travel plans and even dictating the types of cosmetics she could use.

That’s why in 2019 she founded Girl Behind the Hive, a website with advocacy resources, recipes, and stories from her own life. She has also become an active advocate in the push for food safety legislation, meeting with U.S. lawmakers to encourage the passage of the Food Allergy Safety, Treatment, Education, and Research Act. The bill, which requires that sesame is labeled on packaged foods at the start of 2023, was signed into law by President Biden in 2021.

While she’s proud of that work, she knows more work remains to create a truly safe world for people with food allergies. 

What kind of advocacy and awareness building work are you involved in?

I work with a lot of different companies to promote products that are free of allergens. I also work with Mount Sinai Jaffe Food Allergy Institute and do speaking engagements there, to really just raise awareness and be that sort of open book. Advocacy-wise, right before Covid was when I really started getting involved, trying to get laws passed that would help people who have food allergies. In March 2020, about a week before everything shut down, I went with FARE (Food Allergy Research and Education), the biggest nonprofit organization focused on food allergies, to Capitol Hill to lobby for the passage of the FASTER Act, which basically required sesame to be labeled as the ninth top allergen. I really enjoyed being a big part of that. 

What work, legislatively, still needs to be done?

I was actually back in Washington D.C. recently, working on the next bill. This one would focus on labeling medication with the top nine allergens and gluten. Currently, medications aren’t required to be labeled, but a number of them have those top food allergens in them. So this would be pretty monumental to get that one passed. 

What else inspires you?

I’m sort of at the forefront, I guess, of having these severe allergies. It’s pretty common now, there are about two kids in every classroom who have them, but when I was growing up that really wasn’t a thing. There are certain pieces of my life even beyond food that have been really affected, even just going to college and dating, things like that, so that’s really why I started to share my story. From there it kind of took off and I became more comfortable sharing on a very public platform, talking about all the different areas in my life that are impacted.

So many people who have food allergies are afraid to even go on vacation or go away to college and things like that. I went away to college. I didn’t just stay home because of my food allergies. I was always doing social things, went on vacation, traveled, all of that. So I realized that my voice could potentially have a positive impact. I’ve received thousands of messages from people who have allergies, or have significant others and family members who do. That’s what really drives me.

What was your Brandeis experience like?

I loved my time at Brandeis. When I was at Brandeis, I was pretty vocal about my allergies as well, and I had a really strong friend group that fully understood and would also keep an eye out for me and double check things to make sure that it was safe. Brandeis was one of the only schools, when I was there, that had top-eight-allergen-free areas, where I was able to get full meals that were safe for me. Working with the dining hall staff,  I was able to really eat, which was great because I had so many allergies. 

What did you learn at Brandeis that informs the work you do today?

I was a double major in theater and psychology. My theater major prepared me for a lot of the public speaking that I have been doing, including raising my voice on this platform, working with different organizations, and doing interviews, podcasts, and appearances. I feel like because of my theater training at Brandeis, I was able to go into that prepared and confident. Then looking at the psychology piece of it, that’s really what got me interested in understanding that this could have a positive impact on the way that people think, and I could shape their thinking by sharing my story.