Student member profile featured in the spring 2025 issue of the department’s equity, diversity, and inclusion newsletter.

Tell us about yourself including your nationality, ethnicity, and culture.

I was born in Toronto, Canada though my background is a bit of a story. My parents immigrated to Canada as children, both fleeing violence, though from very different places. Ancestrally, both sides of my family hail from northwestern India though no one has lived there for generations. My mom lived in several places in South Asia, but was ultimately displaced by conflict while in Dhaka in the early 1970s. My dad was born in Uganda, but was forced to leave when all South Asians were expelled from the country in 1972. Our culture today is an amalgamation of where we have been and where we are today: we're equally comfortable celebrating Canadian holidays and traditional ones, and our food is often a fusion of Indian and East African cooking. 
For me personally, I lived my entire life before UW in Southern Ontario. I did my undergrad at the University of Waterloo and earned a Masters from the University of Toronto. Outside of work, I love to bake (as many in the department know!), spend a lot of time reading books, and am trying (so far unsuccessfully) to learn how to garden.

How did you come to be associated with the Department of Biostatistics?

After my master's program, I spent two years working as a research consultant for both UNESCO and a statistical demography lab at the University of Toronto. During this time, I was lucky to collaborate with an alumni of the UW Statistics department and to read the works of several professors in Biostatistics and Statistics working on related problems. I was encouraged to apply for PhD programs and am now very happy to be working with those same researchers I was previously admiring from afar.

Tell us something we’d be surprised to know about?  

I've had a very roundabout road to get to where I am today—statistics is my fourth or fifth career path (I've lost count). I actually went to university to become an accountant: my undergrad degree is titled Mathematics/Chartered Professional Accountancy, I interned at one of the big four accounting firms (and worked as a consultant at another later on), and I even enrolled in a Masters of Accounting program at one point (but dropped out—it was very much not for me). This is maybe surprising but definitely not a superpower. I absolutely cannot help you with your taxes!

What motivates you?

I truly just want to make the world a slightly better place. Working for UNESCO was an extremely fulfilling experience, but it opened my eyes to the unacceptable number of forgotten people and problems in the world. I'm hopeful that through this degree, I can develop the skills needed to help meaningfully improve the information ecosystem in the global health and social development world. I certainly do not have the skills for on-the-ground program implementation, but hopefully I can make a difference further upstream in this way.

Who/what has inspired you the most and why?

This is a very hard question! I have been supported by and inspired by so many people over the years. I think here I'd like to acknowledge my former colleagues at UNESCO. These are people who work tirelessly towards the global goal of universal education. I have immense respect for not only their work, but also for their resolve to push towards this goal in the face of constant challenges, crises, and changing global priorities.

What three words would you use to describe yourself?

Curious, persistent, bookworm.