Hi! I’m Jyoti.
Writer.
Cultural worker.
Founder.
Children are clear-eyed and brilliant thinkers. My work takes them seriously.
Drawing on critical pedagogy, arts education, and media literacy, I create spaces for children and their grown-ups to notice, question, interpret, and make meaning together.
My enquiry began with skin color discrimination.
In 2012, I founded The Colo(u)rism Project.
My inquiry into colorism was raising questions about representation, power, and culture. Children and youth appeared in those questions early on, eventually becoming central to my work.
Watch my 2012 TEDxWomen talk that brought this work to a wider audience.
Adults struggle with children’s skin color-related questions! So I wrote a book.
Since its online release in 2019, Different Differenter: An Activity Book about Skin Color has served as a trusted learning resource and credited with translating deep research on children’s colorism experiences into actionable educational experiences.
This work bridges theory and practice. I conducted the research, designed the underlying pedagogical framework, wrote and designed the book, and facilitated 50+ collaborative workshops, before, during, and after its release, to ground the project in community needs.
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 Color”
—BENNETT PARK
DREW BARRYMORE IGTV (2020)
Drew Barrymore looks on at Different Differenter.
—DREW BARRYMORE IGTV
OPEN STUDIOS (2020)
Film posters displayed as part of Blackface/Whiteface and me showing-off my book.
—CORNERSTONE STUDIOS
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 (2028), grows out of that inquiry. Its underlying curriculum views ‘Children as Culture-makers’ and 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 can we create space for children’s wisdom to emerge and pay attention to them.
To see how these ideas come together, click on the video to watch my 3-minute pitch.
‘Ways of seeing’ that guide my practice
Creative problem-solving
My background in advertising has trained me to look at problems from audience perspectives, find viable entry points to name the issue, and meet 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 thinking
After 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 advocacy poster '80+ Fairness Products: To what End at the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (NoMAA), New York.
Collaborative leadership
I bring people, perspectives, and ideas together through curiosity, facilitation and shared inquiry—making room for rigorous and collective thinking. And joy. Always Joy!
“Colorism in Our Communities,” 2017. Visiting speaker with the Restorative Justice High School Group, YES Prep Northbrook High School, Houston.
ABOUT ME
I am Indian-born and New York–based scholar practitioner, currently exploring ideas around cultural visibility and equity 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.
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.