Sandeep is the founder and CEO of SAARI Collective. Always passionate about amplifying South Asian voices, building community, anti-racism, helping young people and delivering social change, Sandeep has worked across many sectors with roles such as a speechwriter, lawyer, Board Chair, leader and advocate for diversity, creativity, community and children’s rights.

Sandeep is well-versed in storytelling and media startup strategy, governance, community engagement, mediation, employment and child safety law.

In his spare time, Sandeep loves to cook and is the four-time Australian Chilli cooking champion (chile con carne) and also a Dad to two lovely kids!

Aman Gupta is a South Asian migrant who has been living in Australia for over 22 years. As Head of Experience, he plays his part in promoting South Asian Australian stories by interacting and coordinating all the various people and teams that work with SAARI.

Aman comes from a design background and has developed a strong body of work across branding, advertising, typography, information and digital design. His previous roles have been with a Sydney-based multicultural marketing & advertising agency and at a national South Asian print magazine.

Reinforcing his passion for helping the community and making a difference, Aman is also the Co-Founder/Director of a charity organisation called Goodie.

In his spare time Aman loves to play sport, discover new skills and explore new food places.

Jasmeet Kaur Sahi is a Melbourne-based editor, writer and arts administrator. She moved to Melbourne to study creative writing and editing at a master’s level at the University of Melbourne.

She has written for the ABC, ArtsHub, Eureka Street and Peril Magazine; taught nonfiction writing at RMIT University and worked as a producer, coordinator and events manager at the Melbourne Writers Festival and Footscray Community Arts Centre. She tweets @JasmeetSahi

Shyamla (they/them/their) is a Performing Artist, Educator, Writer and Host with a Masters Degree in International Human Rights Law & Policy. Previous roles held include: Arts & Culture writer for Desi Australia, Associate Publisher and Columnist for Tracker Magazine (NSWALC), PR Manager for Barnardos Australia, Guest Writer for HuffPost Australia and SSI New Beginnings Festival Ambassador and Host. Shyamla regularly appears in the media to advocate for Cultural Diversity, Inclusion, Anti-Discrimination and the Arts through outlets such as SBS (Hindi, Tamil, Viceland), HuffPost Australia, G’Day India and South Asian Today.

A 2019 Finalist for the NSW Multicultural Communications Awards (Best Print Report) and the winner of the 2020 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Community Medal for Bollykids Preschool Program, Shyamla is also the founder of BINDI BOSSES, a contemporary South Asian Fusion Performing Arts company that featured at TEDxSydney 2020. When not writing or performing, Shyamla enjoys listening to Illuminati Congo, observing native birds and watching Star Trek (Voyager, DS9, Discovery).

Sharan Velauthan is an activist and advocate in areas such as mental health, sustainability, and domestic abuse prevention. His work led him to be the youngest Sri Lankan to do an international TEDx. He also helped start a community built, grass-root level project called Samana for Sri Lanka. In his spare time, he loves to travel and geek out on anime and superheroes.

Marisha Nair is a 28 year old, South Asian Australian woman. She was born in Australia to Indian/Persian parents and raised between Australia and Malaysia. Marisha holds a Bachelor of Communications and a Master of Human Rights. She has worked in the communications field for 4 years and with human rights organisations for another 4 years, with a focus on climate change and migrant and refugee issues.

Currently Marisha works as a public servant and Head of Community for SARRICo. In her spare time Marisha likes to read, hike, skate and learn new skills.

Harshdeep Kaur is a Melbourne-based, South Asian creative and writer. As Editorial Team Leader, she leads the SAARI Editorial Team and supports them in working with the national collective of writers and creators on our platform.

Harshdeep graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce and has since worked across both the corporate advisory and education industry. She has experience working in start-up environments in business operations and marketing roles, and is particularly passionate about quality education. She currently works at an education-based start-up, Illuminate Education Australia, up-skilling primary and secondary school students across Australia in entrepreneurial skills that transfer to many areas in life. She is furthering this passion by co-creating a children’s literacy charity called Ready Reader.

In her spare time, Harshdeep loves to travel, eat dumplings and has recently gotten really into aerial fitness.

Waqar is a journalist and digital producer who works at the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), including SBS Urdu, SBS News, SBS Australia and other SBS language programs. He also does content production, curation and distribution of live and on-demand videos, podcasts, short-form and social media videos and freelance cinematography and photography services.

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It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.
It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.
It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.
It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.