Indian American Stories Podcast

About Dr. Murali Naidu: Dr. Murali Naidu is CEO of San Ramon Regional Medical Center and a former physician. He’s led hospitals through some of the hardest moments in healthcare, especially during COVID, and he’s also deeply involved in education as a trustee at Head-Royce School. What really stood out to me about Dr. Naidu is how he thinks about leadership—not just as running systems, but as taki...

About Dr. Rupa Badlani: Dr. Rupa Badlani is a Bay Area native and a dermatologist at Kaiser Permanente Oakland. She grew up in the Berkeley Hills, went to Head-Royce for middle school, studied at UC Berkeley, went to UC Irvine for medical school, and did her dermatology residency at UCSF where she also served as chief resident. Now she lives in Orinda with her husband and their three kids. At work...

About Visraant Iyer: Visraant Iyer is the Director of Strategic Partnerships & Urban Innovation for the City of Oakland, where he helps make local government work better through design thinking and civic tech. Before that, he worked in startups, presidential campaigns, and national voter engagement efforts. He grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and now lives in Oakland, where he still finds time to p...

About Maulik Bhansali: Maulik Bhansali is a senior portfolio manager and co-head at Allspring Global Investments. He grew up in New Jersey, started out as an actuary, then got a master’s in quantitative finance at UC Berkeley. For the last couple decades he’s been in the Bay Area managing bond portfolios. Outside of work, he’s raising a kid in a mixed-culture family, figuring out how to keep Gujar...

About Janani Ramachandran: Janani Ramachandran is an Oakland City Council member. Councilmember Ramachandran is the youngest person ever elected to the Council and the first South Asian and first LGBTQ woman of color to serve. Before politics, she studied law, founded a nonprofit called Operation Education when she was just sixteen, and worked in community advocacy. Today, she’s focused on making...

About Sy Choudhury Sy Choudhury leads AI Partnerships efforts for Meta, including the company’s engagements across Generative AI, AI Research, AI Infrastructure, and open projects like PyTorch and Llama. Prior to this, Sy held Product Management and Partnership roles at Qualcomm and Wind River Systems. What was most fun about this conversation Hearing him explain how the Reels algorithm is differe...

About Prashanthi Raman: Prashanthi Raman is Advisor to the Co-founder at Rula . Before that, she led global government relations at Cruise, was Lyft’s Head of North America Government Relations, and earlier worked in the Illinois Governor’s office running health policy and legislative affairs. She studied social policy at Northwestern, where she now serves on the Alumni Admissions Council and the...

About Divya Venn: Divya Venn grew up in Sunnyvale, California, and now spends her time indie hacking, writing, and creating content that’s equal parts tech, psychology, relationships, and random thoughts. She’s the kind of person who treats Twitter like an open journal — not to “go viral,” but to actually connect with people. That mindset has led to unexpected friendships, interesting projects, an...

About Dr. Rajni Mandal: Dr. Rajni Mandal lives in Oakland, California, and has had a fascinating path. She trained as a physician and is board-certified in molecular pathology, with degrees and training from Cornell, Duke, NYU, and Mass General. But right now, she’s on a break from medicine to focus on raising her kids, and in the process, she’s become deeply involved in local civic life. She’s a...

About Dr. Neha Gupta: Dr. Neha Gupta is the Deputy Director of the Clinical Resource Hub at the Veterans Health Administration, where she leads telehealth services for veterans across the Western U.S. She lives in Oakland with her husband and two little kids, and before working at the VA, she was a doctor at Highland Hospital, serving the local community. She went to Stanford for college, med scho...

About Dr. Nirav Pandya: Dr. Nirav Pandya lives in Oakland, California and is the Chief of Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery at UCSF and Director of Pediatric Sports Medicine at Children’s Hospital Oakland. He’s also a huge basketball fan (especially the Warriors) and breaks down NBA injuries for fans on social media in a way that’s actually easy to understand. He grew up outside Chicago, went to med sc...

About Gagan: Gagan Biyani is the co-founder and CEO of Maven, and before that he helped start Udemy and Sprig. He grew up in Fremont, CA and now lives in Oakland, just like me. He's super into education, community stuff (like Empower Oakland), and also just chilling with his friends, cooking, and hiking with his wife. His parents are Indian immigrants, and even though he's lived here his whole lif...