Meet Jyoti.
Educator, author, founder.
VISION
I analyze and create media that make children heard and visible across educational resources and learning environments.
By changing the way we communicate, design, and learn and teach, we can build more thoughtful, respectful, and joyful learning environments in children’s homes, schools, media, and communities.
Children are clear-eyed and brilliant thinkers. They are the reason my work works.
MY FOUNDATIONAL BELIEF
-
Knowing children know things, I began working on Different Differenter: An Activity book about Skin Color in 2016. It is an arts-and-crafts-based book for 3-to-8-year-olds and their grown-ups.
-
I saw a wide gap in skin color-related resources for 3-8 year olds and their adults. They were all either fiction or creative non-fiction, but not always directly addressing their lived experiences. I had a vision for an alternative, and I had already been studying skin color independently for 10+ years, so i figured, “If not me then who?”
-
Thank you for asking! Different Differenter' honors children’s agency and creates space for them to engage, interact with, and make meaning—with their grown-ups— in a critically conscious way. Direct, not didactic!
-
Myy work draws from critical pedagogy, media literacy, and multicultural education. The curriculum utilizes play, art-and-craft, and participatory practices to create dynamic environments where children actively interpret, critique, repurpose, and participate in this discourse.
Rethinking Schools
McGraw Hills Wonders
My work and words as seen in
The Juggernaut
My enquiry began in 2008. With skin color.
I was constantly talking about my ideas, so in 2012 TEDxWomen approached me. (For what would soon become my first public talk since 4th grade!)
But I didn’t know that my life would change completely a short few years later. That a definitively focused media and art practice would emerge.
Click below to watch one of the origin stories of my decade-long independent work on identity.
Then, deeper questions followed.
After my first book, and hundreds of journal articles and candid conversations later, came questions around culture.
My 2nd book, Yesterday, Nexterday: An Activity Book about Culture is grounded in the belief that children do not simply inherit culture. They actively interpret, repurpose, and create new ways to think about it! We can listen and articulate their views through play, art, and media literacy pedagogies and participatory practices.
Listen to my pitch about this book in a short, 3-min video.
Here’s what people started noticing!
Join me in making a bigger tent.
Check out my past work!
Access a free skin color-related activity for your PD, leadership cohort, class, art room, library, afterschool program, or home.
Book an interactive talk?
I am available for speaking engagements at youth organizations, schools, and higher ed campuses. Even leadership of color cohorts!
Cultural Visibility convos!
Have questions or engage in cultural visibility work? Amplify my work, collaborate, or introduce me to co-conspirators.
Email Me →
I am an Indian-born, New York–based scholar-practitioner, writer, and educator focused on engaging children, youth, and their grown-ups on discourse around cultural visibility.
I have facilitated workshops and public conversations in schools, universities, social justice organizations, and thought leadership spaces including at TEDxWomen and the Jaipur Literature Festival. My work and commentary have appeared in Bitch! Media, The Washington Post, The Juggernaut, and Radio Free Brooklyn. My first children’s book, Different Differenter: An Activity Book about Skin Color (2019), has been included as an educational resource by The New York Times Wirecutter, Rethinking Schools, Social Justice Books, and McGraw Hill Wonders.
I founded The Colo(u)rism Project in 2012, an independent initiative that has since expanded into an inquiry into childhood and identity. My first public engagement work, Putting the U in Color, a month-long art and media exhibit examining colorism within South Asian communities, was funded by an Houston Arts Alliance via the City of Houston.
Prior to going independent in 2012, I worked in advertising, nonprofit leadership, and consulting. Starting as an intern with J. Walter Thompson, a stint at McCann Erickson, and ending with TiE Houston, where I served as Executive Director. I’ve done creative projects with nonprofits, including Breakthrough NYC, and Asia Society Texas Center.
I hold master’s degrees in Media Studies and Liberal Studies from The New School and CUNY Graduate Center, respectively, and a BFA in Applied Art (Visual Communication) from Delhi College of Art. I live in Washington Heights with my teenage son, who enjoys flute, writing, and designing aerospace video-game things.