Hi! I’m Jyoti.
Writer.
Cultural worker.
Founder.
Children are clear-eyed and brilliant thinkers. My work takes them seriously.
I work at the intersection of childhood, culture, and participatory learning. Drawing on critical pedagogy, arts education, and media literacy, I challenge dominant narratives and explore the power of cultural work to advance social justice—creating spaces for children and grown-ups to notice, question, interpret, and make meaning together.
My enquiry began with skin color.
In 2012, I founded The Colo(u)rism Project.
My inquiry into colorism was already raising larger questions about representation, power, and culture. Children appeared in those questions early on, eventually becoming central to my work.
Watch the TEDxWomen talk that brought this work to a wider audience.
Adults were struggling to answer children’s skin color questions! So I wrote a book.
Skin color led me to… culture.
After taking the book on the road, reading hundreds of journal articles, and having numerous candid conversations, bigger questions emerged. Those questions eventually led me from skin color to a broader inquiry into culture.
My second book, Yesterday, Nexterday: An Activity Book about Culture, grew out of that inquiry. Its underlying curriculum helps adults learn how children interpret, repurpose, and participate in culture in peer settings. Using play, art, media literacy, and participatory practices, it asks how we might create space for their ideas to emerge—and listen to what they have to say.
To see how these ideas come together, click on the video to watch my 3-minute pitch.
My superpower?
A few different ‘ways of seeing.’
Creative problem-solver
My background in advertising has trained me to look at problems from multiple angles, spot patterns, and make unexpected connections. All while meeting audiences where they are.
Jaipur Literature Festival, 2018. In conversation with Puneeta Roy, with poets Jovan Mays and Melizarani T. Selva. Photo: Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times via Getty Images.
Transdisciplinary thinker
With MAs in Media Studies and Liberal Studies (Urban Education), and a BFA in Visual Communication, I connect ideas across disciplines that are often considered separate.
Women in the Heights: Shade, 2026. With my work Cut From the Shame Cloth at the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (NoMAA), New York.
Collaborative leader
I bring people, perspectives, and ideas together through curiosity, facilitation and shared inquiry—making room for rigorous thinking and collective action. And joy. Always Joy!
“Colorism in Our Communities,” 2017. Visiting speaker with the Restorative Justice High School Group, YES Prep Northbrook High School, Houston.
ViRTUAL KEYNOTE (2020)
Media literacy moment: critiquing a CNN video.
—DAYA HOUSTON
CHILDREN’S ART WORKSHOP (2020)
“Leaf Printing: A Hands-on Workshop about Skin Colors”
— BENNETT PARK
DREW BARRYMORE IGTV (2020)
Drew Barrymore looks at Different Differenter.
—DREW BARRYMORE IGTV
OPEN STUDIOS (2020)
Showing Blackface/Whiteface in the back and showing-off my book.
—CORNERSTONE STUDIOS
I am Indian-born and New York–based, with an independent practice exploring cultural visibility with children, youth, and their grown-ups.
I am the founder-creative director of The Colo(u)rism Project, an independent initiative that I formally started in 2012 as a progressive, cross-cultural, and multigenerational space to challenge dominant narratives about people with dark skin. My work is informed by conversations with South Asians, both at home and in the diaspora. These exchanges, along with the work of Black feminist scholars and cultural workers, continue to shape how I think about the ways culture and identity travel, change, and are remade.
I bring three decades to a transdisciplinary practice that combines critical pedagogy, media literacy, and visual communication. I hold master’s degrees in Liberal Studies (Urban Education) from the CUNY Graduate Center and Media Studies from The New School, and a bachelor of fine arts in Applied Art (Visual Communication) from the College of Art, Delhi.
I live in Washington Heights, on the ancestral homelands of the Weckquaesgeek people and in the neighborhood widely known as Little Dominican Republic. I dabble in taking street photos, writing visual poetry, and designing crochet jewelry. Come say hi on IG!