Shaun Illingworth: This begins the second oral history session with Dr. Grishma Shah. Today is September 12, 2025, with Shaun Illingworth. I'm in New Brunswick. You're in the Bronx--is that correct?
Grishma Shah: Yes, that's right.
SI: Last time, we got up to the beginning of your career at Douglass. You mentioned that you lived on campus for that first year and that there was a lot of stuff that Douglass does for first-year students that is often very memorable. Does anything specific stand out about that first year on campus?
GS: Sure. So, I'll start by saying that I had a really great experience at Douglass, one, because I think they incorporate the first-year experience, where they bring in really big speakers. I did live on campus my first year, and then, later, starting my second year, I had moved back home and commuted.
What stuck out to me was, I took some intro political science courses. They were in these giant, huge lecture halls, but I just remember being completely captivated by the professors. There was a professor called Edward Rhodes, who taught International Relations 201, and I remember just being in that class. I think we read Lord of the Rings--which one is the one that's on an island?
SI: Oh, Lord of the Flies.
GS: Lord of the Flies, it was an island, they had to set up their own [society]. I'm confusing the fantasy one with the [other]. [laughter] I just really didn't realize that you could use a novel like that to approach teaching and I learned a lot.
Just overall, my first-year experience was great. My roommate was a girl named Robin and we just had really very similar values, had hit it off. Overall, I joined a lot of activities at Rutgers. I met a lot of people and I just had a very positive first-year college experience.
SI: Do any of the speakers they would bring in stand out in your memory?
GS: I don't remember any of their names, but I do remember them being very accomplished in their fields. I remember it's a very massive audience, because it was the whole incoming class all going to that. So, I don't know, I don't remember any particular course, yes.
SI: As you went on in your career at Douglass, you became a poli. sci. major. What attracted you to getting deeper into poli. sci.?
GS: Sure. So, I think I'd spoken earlier [about how] I had gotten involved with this organization called Operation Smile. I knew I wanted to do international relations or something related to international affairs. Poli. sci., I don't think, at the time, they had a direct international relations major. I think you majored in political science and concentrated on IR.
So, that's where I leaned into [that]. I think I later picked up econ and women's studies--I think it's now called gender studies, but women's studies [then]--minors. All of it kind of just [melded]--the three topics came together really well. For every class I was taking, there was another class that complimented what I was learning in that class.
I don't know if students now pay this much attention to how much overlap and compliments there are between coursework, but I just really became very attracted to anything international. I think I took almost every international kind of class you could take, like comparative politics, colonialism, all that kind of stuff, yes.
SI: Do any of the professors stand out in your memory?
GS: Yes. So, I definitely remember Edward Rhodes. I remember a professor named (Mark Wier?), who I don't know if he was adjunct or not. I remember Professor Theresa Geller, who taught the women's studies course.
I remember Edward Ramsamy, who I kept in touch with for a very long time, but I'm having a hard time finding him lately. He used to teach African American studies and, at the time, he taught colonialism in the Third World. I remember being in a very eye-opening course. It was right before I decided to do a study abroad with Rutgers to India--so, yes, great professors.
SI: You mentioned that your ongoing involvement with Operation Smile lent itself to your academic pursuits. You also started a club focused on Operation Smile. What course did that take in Rutgers? What would you do?
GS: So, first of all, it took a ton of my energy freshman year to get that going. Basically, Operation Smile has student programs across the world and I wanted one at Rutgers, where students can come together and learn more about the organization, possibly get involved and travel abroad with the organization.
So, it took a lot of energy my first year to just kind of build awareness around the organization, get it officially recognized by Rutgers as a club that could rent space and have events and all those types of things.
Operation Smile, at the time, by chance, they had opened up a regional office in New Brunswick. So, I had somehow felt like all the stars had aligned. Just that year that I became a freshman, I was trying to figure out how else I would stay involved in the organization and they had opened up an office. So, I started volunteering at that office and just doing office work.
So, I would say Rutgers was very supportive. Like I said, I got to know the people who run the-- I don't know what the current version of it is called, but, at the time, it was called the Student Activities Office. It was called SAC. You'd go to that building and it'd be basically everything you needed to get organized to be a club leader was in that building. It was quite a supportive group of people.
SI: How many people, roughly, were involved with the club?
GS: I would say no more than like twenty-five to thirty, fluctuating; some people would come to more meetings than others. I think when we had events--I remember, we did a big Valentine's Day event where we did a fundraiser and a Valentine's Day type of thing. A lot more people, of course, came to that, because you didn't have to be a club member to come to that. It was just more like a (more or less) fundraising event.
SI: Did you organize any trips?
GS: No--like in terms of students from Rutgers going on Operation Smile trips?
SI: Yes.
GS: I was not personally involved in organizing trips, but we did have the Rutgers students go on international service missions, yes.
SI: Did you go on any during that period?
GS: I did. I returned to Honduras while I was in college. I went to the Philippines while I was in college. I interned at Operation Smile headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, while I was there. So, I did quite a bit. I stayed involved and did it quite a bit while I was there.
SI: What do you think you got out of those experiences?
GS: Oh, gosh, everything. I think, number one, it is a time of transformation, that age when you're in college. So, I think a lot of my worldview was shaped by those experiences, this idea that things don't center around me, things don't center around the US, that there's a larger global environment.
Just very human experiences I had with people across the globe, just being able to talk to a mother whose sole worry was this child who didn't have adequate healthcare, and the fact that one small, little operation could mitigate all her worries or alleviate all her issues. It was quite humbling. Just all of those experiences, I think, combined made me want to dig deeper into global development.
I think one of the really great things about Operation Smile is it has a solution that's rather simple, right? You were born with a cleft lip or palette. It's a simple forty-five-minute surgery and it's resolved.
What is more complicated is, why wasn't the healthcare available? How did the public healthcare system fail that person to begin with, in another country? Everything else, the more I dug in, seemed way more complex.
So, one of the reasons I've stayed involved with the organization is, the more I studied this stuff, the more I realized how complex these issues are and how difficult they are to resolve or mitigate. So, Operation Smile seems to have a very simple solution in a very complex world.
SI: You also were part of several South Asian American-related clubs. Do you remember the names of the clubs you were in and what you did there?
GS: So, there were two. One of them still exists for sure. There was this club called AIR; it's Association for Indians at Rutgers, I think it was. I went to one of their meetings and it seemed--I don't mean any disrespect to the club now or whoever runs it--it was one of those very popular clubs. Everything was a popularity contest.
They did a lot of fun stuff, like hold dances and parties. I wasn't getting the depth, I guess, from the organization that I was looking for, which was more to learn more about my culture, expose cultural things or political things.
So, then, I had a couple of students that I went to high school with that I wasn't really friends with in high school, but we all got together at college. We kind of shared this similar experience. We're like, "We need something deeper. We need to have an organization that has more depth." I don't know if this [had just started]--like, I want to say someone before me already started it--but, by the time I got involved, it must've been in its second or third year, max.
It was called Indian Political and Cultural Association. Our sort of distinction from AIR was that we are much more focused on non-social aspects. We are just focused on awareness and bringing certain issues to the forefront.
So, I remember having speakers from--there's a group called Manavi in New Brunswick. It basically focuses on [survivors of abuse], and Sakhi, it just focuses on people from the South Asian community who are suffering from domestic violence and provides them safe housing resources, legal help, all that kind of stuff. We'd bring in those kind of speakers.
I remember, we asked a Rutgers econ professor to come in one day and explain to us the Indian economy and how it's changed in the last few years, that kind of bit. So, I was involved in that organization. I think, at some point, I became an executive board member and all that kind of stuff.
SI: Roughly how many members would you have?
GS: We were not the cool club, for sure. [laughter] I think AIR had, like, five hundred members. I want to say maybe we had like fifty to one hundred.
SI: Still very good. [laughter]
GS: We had more people show up to events, like I said.
SI: You mentioned last time how you would often have to work at the family store while you were commuting. Would you have to do that still or would you have another job?
GS: It really depended. I think, on my college schedule, I did spend a lot of time on campus. I mean, it was like these days where if I was on campus, I would get in at nine and not leave until eleven at night, because everything would be squeezed into one day.
Then, there were days where I would not go to campus at all. Those days, I would get either work done or, if my parents needed a bit of help or some kind of relief at the business, I would go and help them out or I would take my work to the business, and then, just work from there while we had some breaks between customers and that kind of stuff.
I do remember being in college and my parents wanted to go to India for a few weeks over winter break. So, I said, "Yes, go ahead." I remember, I had time off from college, so, I just ran the whole store for them for a couple weeks. I did have help from my sister. It wasn't just me alone, but that kind of thing.
SI: Are there other activities from your time at Douglass that stand out? You were obviously very busy with what you've talked about so far.
GS: Yes. There's something at Douglass called PLEN [Public Leadership Education Network]. I want to [say it stands for], I don't know, leadership education network, plenary leadership education, something like that. It used to be at Douglass. It was a great networking organization. Their whole goal was to bring in people, get you internships, all that kind of stuff.
I think you applied to be one of their [mentees]. You applied to be part of a cohort of people that they would assist or help. I remember being part of that organization and it really helped me a lot. I think it got me an internship at the Department of Labor in New Jersey for one summer, that kind of thing.
There, I was involved with the Eagleton Institute of Politics. I started going to some of their events as a poli. sci. major as an undergrad. It built out a reputation and network, so that when I was a senior, I think they have a four-plus-one program where you take a couple of grad level courses your senior year and you could finish, within one year, a master's. That's exactly what I did.
I remember applying for the program. It's a fully-funded fellowship. It's, I want to say, the Eagleton Fellowship. I remember applying for the program, taking a couple of grad level courses my senior year, adding the public policy degree for my master's. It was in conjunction with the Bloustein School.
So, that time stands out, because, I mean, I know it runs into my master's program, but, even as a senior, I remember that they'd bring in a lot of high-level politicians, political figures. Just sort of being in that network of people who were listening to all that, it's an experience that resonated.
SI: Did you wind up going for any internships?
GS: I did. So, I think, one summer, I had an internship with the Department of Labor. That was set up through PLEN at Douglass. One summer, I had an internship with Operation Smile headquarters. So, I had gone down to Norfolk, Virginia.
Then, one year, I was in India. So, I did study abroad during undergrad, my junior year. It wasn't even a full year; I think the program is set up from June to December or June to January. So, you come back for the spring semester.
So, my junior year, I did eight months abroad through the study abroad program at Rutgers, which had a huge impact on me. It was my first time in life living in India. It was the first time living in the country I was born in, outside of leaving at the age of seven. It was in Delhi and not Baroda, which is the town I was born in. So, it was a very different experience.
The two people who run that program at Rutgers, they're adjunct econ faculty at Rutgers, and then, run this program in Delhi. They were lifelong Delhi-ites. So, they had all of these connections where they set up lunches and dinners and trips and all that kind of stuff for us to go meet people and that kind of stuff. It was a very meaningful experience, being at St. Stephen's College, which is where the program is at.
St. Stephen's, I didn't know at the time, I learned later in life, that the exchange program that Rutgers has at St. Stephen's--St. Stephen's is a very, very prestigious school in India. It's a very, very prestigious school in Delhi. It's where a lot of very high-profile diplomatic kids go. Shashi Tharoor, who was the guy who was next-in-line for the UN Secretary-General, he went there. So, that was also very helpful, because he came to speak at St. Stephen's.
[Editor's Note: Shashi Tharoor served as a United Nations official from 1978 to 2007, retiring as the Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information.]
After the talk, I went up to him and I said, "I'm actually on an exchange program from Rutgers," blah, blah, blah. We talked for a while. When I came back to the States and I had that one year extra, I actually dropped him an email. I said, "I met you at St. Stephen's and it's my dream to work at the United Nations. Can I get an internship?" He wrote back and he said, "Well, come see me."
So, I went to go see him and he goes, "Listen, there are no undergrad internships at the UN. In general, you have to be a graduate student." He goes, "Except, there's two exceptions--there's the World Food Program and there's UNICEF. Those are the two bodies that will take undergrad interns. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to drop an email to both."
He was very high level at the time at the UN. So, he's like, "I'm going to drop an email to both of those agencies and see that they'll take you as an intern." A week later, I had an email from someone that said, "Oh, would you like to be our summer intern? Could you come see us?"
So, I would not have gotten that unless [I had] the network that Rutgers provided me, through St. Stephen's in Delhi, all that kind of stuff; also, just made lifelong friends that I still see. When I visit Delhi, even now, I will go visit them and go reminisce and all that kind of stuff. So, everything about that experience has impacted my life since.
SI: Did you mostly stick to the campus or would you work with the community in some way?
GS: I did a lot of outreach through the campus organizations there. There was an organization on campus, that I think it was a very socially conscious organization, they had set up an anti-domestic violence workshop, where you'd go and you trained women on, like, "This is not [good]. You shouldn't take [this]," whatever, whatever. I remember going to that workshop.
At the time, up north in the Himalayas, there was a big earthquake a few weeks before. There was a group of students who had gotten together and they're like, "Oh, we're going to go up there and rebuild homes," and I was like, "Yep, that sounds good. I'll come." [laughter] I'm like, "All right, why not?"
It was roughing it. We all backpacked up there. We stayed--I think we found this little home that we stayed in. I don't know who arranged all this. I just remember being a part of the group and going. I remember that there was no formal sanitation facilities. You just kind of went in the outhouse. I think we took a bath in the waterfall. It was a whole experience.
I remember it having a very deep impact, because, when I came back, I think, at the time, email was still relatively new. You had to go to an Internet cafe. I sent this big, long, emotional email to all of my friends in America that, "There's this woman who we didn't get to finish building her house. She needs this much and I really want to go back and build a house." I had raised a bunch of money, so that we could go back and build this home.
There was an outpouring. I think it was like eight hundred dollars, which was not a lot of money, thinking back to it, but, at the time, I thought, "Oh, my God, that's amazing." By the way, eight hundred dollars was enough to rebuild this woman's home, because we're talking about up in the middle of nowhere, literally just four walls and a roof.
So, just that time abroad was really impactful. It was the first time I felt really connected to my roots. I took Hindi, I tried to learn Urdu, I took classical Hindustani music. I did everything we could imagine. I was just, like, completely enamored by the whole country and the situation.
SI: You traveled around the country then.
GS: We did. I mean, a lot of it was set up through Rutgers. They had already set up a few trips for us and we did that. Some of it was set up through St. Stephen's, like St. Stephen's does annual trips as well. So, I remember signing up for those. You did a little bit of travel.
So, we went to South India with the Rutgers cohort. There was seven of us, plus the two directors, and then, through St. Stephen's and their programming, and I don't really exactly remember what the organization was. We went to a whole bunch of temples in Rajasthan, we went on a train, all that kind of stuff.
SI: When you were at Douglass, were there any kind of undergraduate--I guess it'd be campuswide--services for Hindu students?
GS: When I was at Douglass?
SI: Yes, in general.
GS: I do not remember there being religious services like that.
SI: Now, I think they have more official chaplain-type positions for different religions.
GS: Oh, okay.
SI: Yes.
GS: I don't remember that being there. I remember us doing religious/cultural events, like Navratri [a festival honoring the Hindu goddess Durga] or something like that. I remember there was something with Student Council, but I don't remember something official from the University side.
SI: Okay.
GS: It was a long time ago, too. [laughter]
SI: You got involved with Eagleton. What kind of specific things would you do as part of that fellowship?
GS: There was a series of classes we had to take to get our master's. On top of that, all the fellows had a number of outside events and projects we had to do. A lot was done. Like, I want to say there were maybe ten fellows, maybe a little bit more. Those ten fellows had to go through a series of seminars and speakers and that kind of stuff.
That was good, because it built the bond between the group. A lot of even like classes, I think, were, when we were in the class, it was just the ten fellows, for instance. It was a class especially designed (or seminar especially designed) for us.
I do remember doing--and she passed away a couple of years ago. I remember getting her obituary. Her first name was Ruth. Her last name is escaping [me] here, but I did a research project with her in which I studied South Asians in politics.
At the time, there were still very few people of Indian origin (or South Asian) who were in politics. There were maybe three or four very local [ones] who were Congressmen or that kind of thing. I remember going to interview them and asking them, "Why did you get involved?" I wrote a whole report and she had helped me through it. I just remember that project for whatever reason, yes.
SI: Was that Ruth Mandel?
GS: Yes, Ruth Mandel.
SI: Okay.
GS: She did pass away recently, right?
SI: I believe so, yes.
GS: Yes. Did you know her?
SI: No, I just knew her name.
GS: Yes, she was a very prominent figure.
SI: Did you have to do a thesis or anything like that as part of the work?
GS: That, I'm thinking about it, I don't know if this research project I did with her was a thesis or independent study, but I'm thinking maybe. We had to do something, I think, that was a research-oriented project. I don't think we called it a thesis. I want to say that my project was that.
SI: As you're going through this program, what were you envisioning for yourself in terms of your career?
GS: Honestly, I feel really naive when I say this, but I'm the kind of person who never thought about job outcomes as I went through things. I don't know why. I just kind of did things because I loved doing them.
I was like, "Oh, I'm just going to go study abroad," or, "I'm going to study political science because I love it," or, "I'm going to keep [doing this]." It didn't really hit me that I would need to get a job after I finished the public policy program until, I don't know, I'm like, "Oh, my God, now, I have to go work." I was thinking in my head, "I can't sit in an office like nine to five," or whatever, what every kid, not every kid, but a lot of us go through.
In some way, I knew I always wanted to work at the United Nations, for instance. I did. I went to go work at the United Nations for a bit, which we can talk about later, but I knew in my head a romantic, romanticized version of my career was that I would go work at the UN. During my PhD program, I did go work at the UN and it was not as romanticized as I had imagined. [laughter]
So, when I was close to finishing, my cohort was beginning to look at jobs and getting jobs and things. I was thinking in my head, "Oh, this is what we have to do now? We have to get a job." A few years earlier, there was another Eagleton fellow called [Modia] "Mo" Butler, who's a prominent figure in New Jersey politics. He was Corey Booker's chief of staff--not at the time, later in life.
He was an Eagleton fellow and he was executive director of a nonprofit called Do Something, Newark Do Something. I had applied to a bunch of places, didn't really know what I was looking for, but, like, a program director job had come up at this Newark Do Something that came through the channels of Eagleton.
So, I wrote a really--it's funny, because he did make fun of me, he still makes fun of me, years later, because I was a very passionate email writer. I would just write these really passionate emails about why they should give me this internship or why I should get this job. This is what I did with the UN thing, too. [laughter]
So, he goes, "I had all these applications, and then, one email from you, which was basically a long history about why you love service and why you think you're a good fit for this job." He's like, "I didn't even look at the rest of this stuff, because I was like, 'Yes, whoever can explain themselves that passionately, they must really want to do this.'" Then, he goes, "I knew you were an Eagleton Fellow," so, everything else probably just fell into place. So, he hired me.
I got the job title program director for Newark Do Something. I worked there for two years before I applied for a PhD program. Basically, I had a difficult time in that job, in the sense that it was not a natural fit for me. I loved the job, I loved my boss. I still think Mo Butler is one of the best leaders around, but the job requirement was basically that I had to work with the Newark Public School System in getting them civically engaged.
I don't know how to say this without sounding very uneducated, I guess--I had a really hard time reconciling why so many of the kids in the Newark Public School System weren't studying and doing the best they could, if that makes sense. I think I had this very immigrant mentality.
I think, at the time, it's an Abbott school district; Newark was an Abbott school district at the time. I don't know what we call them now. I think the average spent on a child was like nineteen thousand dollars. It was well above the New Jersey average. There were a ton of resources that I would see, like just Do Something itself would provide all of these resources to get involved and all.
I had a really hard time understanding the culture of why certain kids were just not studying and doing the best they could. I also remember having really long conversations with Mo, who is African American and he grew up in an inner city, in Philadelphia, and, later, went to Franklin & Marshall and all that kind of stuff, but just having these really sort of deep conversations about how I reconcile this.
He goes, "Well, you have a completely different family life," and he goes, "You're not going home with these kids. You're not seeing the culture they live," and it was very eye-opening for me. It was the first time I kind of processed that everyone doesn't have the same emphasis on education that my family did or that my community does, right.
Almost like everything in the Indian American community I grew up in was--there is no one who ever questions that you have to go to college. It is a given. You go to college and you're supposed to study and you're supposed to get the best education you could possibly get with the resources you have.
I was like, "Well, these kids are given the same opportunities. Why aren't they processing that?" It was like the dropout rate was really high. It's just a whole thing. I had a hard time in that job and I would have these long talks with Mo. He would explain to me a lot of the culture and the reasoning and why my view is very biased and all that kind of stuff.
I think, by the end of that second year in that job, I had already decided--like, I love learning--I knew in my head I was going to go get a PhD, because I'm like, "Okay, well, I have a master's. What's the next degree I can get?" In my head, I was just like, "Oh, gosh, I love learning. What am I going to do?" So, by the end of that year, I had already told him I had started applying to joint PhD/JD programs.
Part of me always had this thing for law and I was like, "Oh, maybe I'll do law school," but I wasn't sure. So, Rutgers-Newark, at the time, had a joint PhD/JD program. I applied and I got in. I remember, like this is the message I send my kids all the time, which is, "Just ask, because you never know." I had gotten waitlisted at South Asian studies at UPenn, which was my top choice. At the time, I was like, "Oh, I just want to do South Asian studies."
I had gotten waitlisted at [the] South Asian studies PhD program at UPenn, I'd gotten waitlisted by Penn Law. So, I was in a quandary, because I just was, like, waiting for this wait list. Then, I got into the Rutgers PhD program, but the JD bit did not come through. I'm pretty sure I got rejected. I'm not sure.
So, now, I'm in the PhD program, but there was no offer on the table for funding or anything (or it hadn't come through yet). At the time, I was still waiting for NYU. I don't know if there was a South Asian studies program. I don't know exactly what their program was called. I was waiting for NYU.
Because I worked in Newark at the time, I knew where the office was for this PhD program. I walked in, I introduced myself to the director and I said, "I applied to your PhD program. I did get a letter that I got in, but I have no information on funding. Quite frankly, unless funding comes through, I don't know if I can do it, right."
The next day, I had an email that said, "You're fully funded. You're fully funded for tuition. Your living stipend is seventeen thousand dollars," which is what, at the time, Rutgers standard pay was for PhD students.
I was like, "Oh, okay," like I just had to walk in and ask, [laughter] because I guess, in their heads, they had a series of applicants who were waiting and they had to read through them still. They're like, "Oh, well, she came in, looked like a great choice," blah, blah.
That's how I ended up at Rutgers-Newark for the PhD Program in Global Affairs, had a really good experience there as well. I'm not trying to [overstate it]--a good experience in the general [progression], as in I love the classes, all that stuff. The dissertation committee, that part (I've heard a lot of people have this experience), my advisors were often MIA when I needed them, but they weren't MIA when I needed a job.
So, I ended up doing a lot of work with the Business School there. So, Global Affairs and the Business School had a lot of classes that were cross-listed. I started studying. I knew, I had decided, that I wanted to study globalization in India and culture and all that kind of stuff already in development in India.
So, I started taking a lot of Business School classes. I took a couple classes on the Indian economy. It all sort of ended up being in the Business School for whatever reason. So, I got to know the Business School faculty quite well. (Berja?), he's still there. I just had lunch with him a few months ago.
Kevin Kolben, not the musician, Kevin Kolben, he's a professor at the Business School at Rutgers-Newark. At the time, I had taken one of his classes and he was taking students to India. He goes, "I'm taking a group of students to India. Would you be my graduate assistant on it? because you have the background in it." He goes, "I don't have a ton of money, but I can pay for you, obviously, to go abroad or whatever. Then, I could pay you six hundred dollars."
As a PhD student, that offer felt like God sent. I'm like, "Wait, you want me to go to India with you, you're going to pay for all my accommodations and airfare, and then, you're going to pay six hundred dollars to coordinate logistics for this trip?" I'm like, "Yes, let's do it." So, I went with Kevin, I think in 2006 for the first time.
We had a great time. He had set up all these great business visits, all that kind of stuff. I went with him again in 2008, I want to say, before I graduated. I can't remember exactly, but that's where I learned to take students abroad, basically. That's where I learned that that's a thing, that you could make it a class. That's why, in my current role here, I take students abroad almost every year.
Also, I'll say this, in terms of my PhD dissertation, I didn't have a ton of handholding. I kind of just had to figure it out, but, when it came to the job market, one thing I learned when I was out there is that Rutgers has a fantastic reputation. I would go on academic interviews and they're like, "Oh, your PhD's from Rutgers. In our eyes, it's like an Ivy League PhD." I'm like, "Oh, okay." For me, it was always like the state school that I went to because it was cheap and whatever.
So, I learned that Rutgers has a great reputation, and I still learn that when I go places. I don't get that from the high school students and the kids who go there, because I think they undervalue it because it's a state school. They go here and they're like, "Oh, it's such a big school, so many people go there," but, when I travel, whenever I mention the name, it has such great name recognition and has such a good reputation.
So, when I went on the job market, my PhD advisor, whose name's Farok Contractor, he's still there.
[RECORDING PAUSED]
GS: When it came to the job market, he picked up the phone and called people. He literally said, "I have a candidate. She's on the job market. She's graduating," because you know the whole academic cycle, it's a year in advance.
So, he said, "Oh, I have a PhD candidate. She should be done defending her [dissertation]," blah, blah, blah, whatever. When I had applied to the job at Manhattan, which was Manhattan College at the time, it's now a university, actually, I hadn't heard of Manhattan College when I applied to it. I grew up in New Jersey, was just not on my radar.
It's a small, private Catholic college in the Riverdale area of the Bronx, but my search was very limited. I knew I needed to be in the New Jersey/Tri-State Area and that the academic market is so small that I knew that I would only be looking at schools in this area. I got primed to be at a business school because I took so many business classes.
Even though my degree is in global development, international affairs, I did my dissertation on India at the time. It was like everything was ripe for having an India/China specialist at business schools. I applied for this job. I remember, I think Farok called the chair of the department and said, "I believe I've [got] a candidate who's applied for this job and I think she's fantastic. She'd be a great fit for you and you should seriously consider her."
He didn't say hire her, but I think without instigating it, he made calls for me, which I was very surprised at. I'm like, "What am I doing?" that kind of thing. So, that's how I ended up at Manhattan College. I have been here now--I started in 2008, so, I've been here for a very long time. I did the whole up-the-ranks thing. I started as an assistant professor, got tenured, became associate, became full.
I became the Director of the Global Business Studies Program. I just took on an Associate Dean position like a month ago. That's sort of where we are. In-between all that, I wrote a book, yes.
SI: Let me...
GS: Backtrack a little bit.
SI: Get into some specifics. You talked about how important the United Nations experience was. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
GS: Yes. So, the undergrad experience at the World Food Program, which was basically that internship that my network had set up, Shashi Tharoor had set up, I didn't do anything, if that makes sense. [laughter] I went there every day and there was no one really giving me any responsibility or work. What they would let me do is shadow them everywhere.
So, I would sit in on all these high-profile meetings, it seemed at the time, where I would just sit. I would take copious notes, but no one asked me for my notes later. [laughter] I was in the big 1 UN Building. I had a badge. I just thought to myself, "Wow, this is the coolest thing. I have a UN badge," because I just thought it was that cool or it was, like, my dream.
So, I learned a lot about the World Food Program, what they do, all that kind of stuff, but I don't think I added any value. Looking back, I don't think I added any value or the internship didn't add that much value to me and vice versa, but I did learn about the World Food Program.
One of the best "full circle" moments I've ever had in my life is, the following year, I went to Kenya for a couple of months. I stayed in, like, a mud hut with these Christian missionaries. Don't ask how I got there, I always did all this weird stuff, but it was a connection through Operation Smile.
I'd called them. I said, "I want to visit Kenya. I want to go to Africa. I don't know what country to go to. I'm going to pick Kenya because I know you." They're like, "Okay. Well, we know these Christian missionaries who do this farming development work out in the middle of Kenya. You can go hang out with them. They love guests."
So, I get there. It's a fully sustainable environment they've set up. It's like a tin hut, they collect rainwater, all that kind of stuff. It's a whole thing. Every morning, they go out and teach people, like, farming sustainability. They also talk about Jesus, because they're Christian missionaries, and I'm a Hindu person who showed up at their thing.
So, I would question them all the time. I would question, like, what they're doing as missionaries. They loved it. They were the nicest people. They're like, "The only other guests we ever have are other Christian missionaries. So, it's really refreshing that you're here, because you're questioning a lot of things that you're getting from your knowledge of colonialism and what happened," and all that kind of stuff.
They had good answers and they were a lovely couple. I remember going out one day, these, like, long, hot days where you go out and you knock on doors and you talk to people about how to grow better grain or whatever, mostly stuff like that. They would invite us into their home. I remember going into this woman's home, it was like a mud hut. She's like, "Please, please, sit."
So, we sat and they were going through a drought at the time, but [their] hospitality's incredible. So, she offered us a bowl of something. It looks like porridge, but it was their main dish. It's called ugali, which looks like a bowl of porridge.
I remember my host asking, "Hey, there's been quite a drought and you don't need to [feed us]," whatever. She goes, "No, no, you have to have this." So, we had the ugali. Then, later, we were asking, "Where did you get the grain?" She said, "The World Food Program does airdrops and this grain is from the World Food Program."
I had this moment where I was like, "Well, last summer, I spent the summer volunteering, interning at the World Food Program and thinking, 'What am I doing? I'm doing nothing. I'm just sitting here,' but the World Food Program itself is very important. The summer after, I get to sit and receive the grain that they were talking about, how they're going to strategize." So, it was really cool. It was just really a moment of like, "Okay, like, even if I wasn't doing anything, the organization's doing really great stuff." Where were we going with this?
SI: Just more about your experiences with the UN.
GS: Oh, okay. So, the internship itself was okay, but, then, I had this great World Food Program moment the next summer. Then, after Do Something, I got to my PhD program at Global Affairs. That particular department had a lot of connections with the United Nations and, as a graduate student, it's a lot easier to get an internship at the United Nations. It's not easy, but it's a lot easier if you're a graduate student.
So, one of my classmates at the time was already interning at UNIFEM, which is the United Nations Fund for Women. They call it UNFW now. At the time, it was called UNIFEM. She said, "Well, I intern at UNIFEM, and they have an internship open. Do you want to apply?" blah, blah, blah. I applied.
So, I applied, and it was not just an internship. It changed into a position at some point. So, I worked at UNIFEM for about six months. It was much more meaningful than the undergrad internship, because, like I said, I don't think they take undergrads at the UN and they just carved out some niche for me. It was much more meaningful the second time around, but it was still so very bureaucratic.
I was at the very bottom of the totem pole as an intern, and then, also, I think I did, like, a three-month consulting gig or something. I was at the very bottom of the totem pole. Basically, these things where someone asks you to research something, you write up the notes and you give it to them. To climb up that bureaucratic ladder really takes decades.
There's also this whole other thing where the United Nations has a quota system in which they try to make the employment, the UNICEF, look like the world. So, based on your nationality and citizenship is how you get [hired]. So, like, there's always way more, let's say, spots open for people who are being hired from, I don't know, Uganda, for instance, versus people who are being hired from the United States, because there's already way too many US citizens working at the UN.
I even thought about, "Oh, like, why don't I go apply as an Indian citizen?" way too many Indians working at the UN. So, it's a quota system in which you wanted a coveted position. It was really difficult. Then, I thought, "Okay, the level of impact I want to make, when am I going to make that at this organization?" At the end of the day, it's a political organization. There was a lot of not great work environments.
So, by that time, I think I was in my second year of my PhD program. I had already met my to-be, then, by that point, my husband, but my to-be husband a couple years earlier. We had talked about what work-life balance would look like and what I wanted to do after having a family. Academia seemed really appealing. So, I did my PhD in four years. The last year of my PhD program, my husband, Amit, had this opportunity to go work in Singapore as an expat.
He works for a bank. They're like, "Well, we need someone to go to Singapore for a year," and I said, "Oh, that's a really cool opportunity." I was in the writing phase of my dissertation, so, I didn't have any classwork left. I talked to my advisor, Farouk. He's like, "Yes, you should go."
He goes, "By the way, I'll see you there, because Rutgers runs a campus in Singapore and I go there every six weeks to teach." I'm like, "Oh." So, actually, I saw my PhD advisor more in Singapore than I did ever in Newark.
So, we moved to Singapore for a year, the last year of my PhD program. At the time, I was already twenty-eight or twenty-nine and I think I graduated with my PhD at twenty-nine. We were talking about having a family, how you balance everything, all that kind of stuff. Academia started to feel very appealing. So, I sort of geared the search towards academia.
SI: We only have a few minutes left here, but tell me, how did you meet your husband?
GS: We met through family friends. So, my husband, a good friend of his is married to my cousin. So, my husband was brought up in India. He moved here for graduate school. He went to the University of Dallas at Texas. Once he finished UTD, he moved to New Jersey for work.
At UTD, he had a friend who was married to my cousin. So, my cousin was coming to visit us and he was like, "Oh, I'm going to get my friend to pick us up at the airport. We're going to spend a few days with him, and then, we're going to come," whatever. So, there's more detail and complication there, but, really, through family friends. I don't know how much you need to know. [laughter]
He'll tell you a different version of the story, but, yes, the point was, he came to my house. I wasn't even home at the time. I was in Russia, an Operation Smile thing. My family, he had dinner with my family and they really liked him.
When I got back, they were just all like, "You've got to meet this guy," and I'm like, "No." He had no clue, by the way. Because my cousins were still around, we met again. My family said, "We just orchestrated the whole thing for you, but he thinks that it all happened very organically." [laughter]
SI: If you have another minute, can you tell me about the trip to Russia?
GS: Oh, sure. The trip to Russia was with Operation Smile. So, it was in 2004, I want to say, or 2003. I'm not exactly [sure]--2003, I think that's when I met my husband. It was to Novosibirsk, which is in Siberia, like a north point of Russia.
It was a traditional what we call Operation Smile service trip. We had a group of doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, volunteers like me. We went in for ten days, operated on kids for free, and then, we left. So, that was the trip to Russia, yes.
SI: Were you doing the same kind of thing, comforting families?
GS: Yes. At the time, because I was old enough, I was the sponsor of the two high school kids who were on the trip.
SI: That's great.
GS: You have a lot of patience, Shaun.
SI: I was thinking most people don't get to see cities in Siberia.
GS: Yes. You know what? completely unexpected. First of all, it was in August, so, it was summertime in Russia. So, it was a nice, warm [place]. It was not cold. Most people think of Siberia and freezing tundra kind of stuff, but it was summer. It's an absolutely beautiful city, Novosibirsk, because it has public transport, great cafes, all that. I was very, very pleasantly surprised.
SI: Cool. I think I'll probably want to talk to you one more time, if that's okay.
GS: Sure.
SI: Yes.
GS: Well, I appreciate you having so much interest.
SI: Yes, absolutely. Let me just stop the recording.
GS: Sure, okay.
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Reviewed by Shaun Illingworth 2/3/2026
Reviewed by Grishma Shah 3/29/2026