Vandana Kumar
CEO, President of the board
Vandana leads the India Currents Foundation as President and CEO. As a new immigrant, she co-founded India Currents magazine in 1987 and published an award-winning print magazine from April 1987 to Dec 2017. Fully digital today, India Currents has the largest following among Indians in the United States.
Vijay Rajvaidya
CFO, secratary of the board
Vijay Rajvaidya serves as the Managing Director of India Currents Inc. His 30 years of experience in the technology industry of the Silicon Valley have fueled the vision of growing India Currents into a global enterprise. He believes that Indian Americans bring a rich culture, civilizational history and high education to their new home. Even as they strive to be productive citizens in their new country, they maintain their cultural and ethnic identity.
Jayashree Patil
board member
Jayashree Patil is deeply interested in Media, Marketing, and Social Media. Jayashree Patil currently works as a “Social Media Evangelist” at Digite Inc.
She worked as VP of Marketing for Youplus Inc. for two years from 2016 to 2018. Also, she worked at Arohi Systems as Vice President of Marketing and Sales. In 2006 she started a South Asian Magazine Nirvana Woman addressing Fashion, Lifestyle, and Issues facing South Asian women in America. As the CEO of the magazine, she worked with various media agencies in Los Angeles and New York. She has a deep interest in South Asian Media and is involved with a lot of South Asian organizations. She was the first Volunteer Administrative office of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) a global organization for South Asian Entrepreneurs and Business Executives. She also was the founding member of the India Community Center and was on its board for the first 12 years. She also volunteers at Foundation for Excellence to improve its social media presence.
Jayashree Patil is an active member of various social media platforms and has a large LinkedIn and Twitter following. She would like to contribute to South Asian Media in the coming years and continue her philanthropic work. When she is not glued to the computer She is cooking, painting, or traveling the world.
You can reach her at jayapatil@gmail.com or on Twitter @eduentrepreneu
Or on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/nirvanawoman1/
Sandy Close
board member
Sandy started her career covering China and Vietnam as an editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review in the mid-1960s. She became editor of Pacific News Service in 1974 and was a pioneer in developing youth media. In 1996, she founded New America Media, the first and largest collaboration of ethnic news organizations. Her work has received several awards, including a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” and the 2011 Polk Award for Career Achievement. In 1996, a film she co-produced, Breathing Lessons, won an Academy Award for best short documentary. She founded Ethnic Media Services in 2017 to continue her work amplifying and elevating the voices of ethnic media.
Jaya Padmanabhan
board member
Jaya Padmanabhan is a journalist, essayist, and fiction writer. Her columns and articles can be found in the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Standard, Forbes, PBS Next Avenue, The Bold Italic/Medium, Elemental, and India Currents. Previously, she was the editor of India Currents. She has won 24 awards for her editorials and essays, 8 awards for fiction, and a number of reporting grants and residencies.