Guest Speaker: Aarti Shahani

Earlier this year, my PRL 215 class listened to a pre-recorded interview featuring Aarti Shahani, NPR Silicone Valley Business Respondent and author of “Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares”. I immediately fell in love with Aarti as I listened to her explain her family and activist background was her inspiration for writing this book, as well as how it led her to entering the journalism field. Hearing her speak about her journey and cultivating various yet significant parts of her life to build her career was inspiring for me as a senior in college. I say this not only because I have similar interests in communications and politics/activism, but also because I resonated with hearing about how she discovered her voice and her passion for storytelling through her experience in activism and public policy.

(Source: https://video.syr.edu/media/t/1_0epmayl7)

Aarti began the interview by explaining her family’s experience of moving to America and how being Indian immigrants had shown her harsh realities of things such as the law enforcement system, obstacles for people of color to obtain full freedom, etc. Yet despite being exposed to these harsh realities, Aarti took action toward helping her father during his legal process by becoming her family’s lawyer at 19-years-old, as well as becoming more involved with activism and sharing her voice to make a difference. This is where she claims to have realized that storytelling was her gift, and is what directed her towards the journalism path.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9vVLenZD-s)

What inspires me the most about Aarti’s story is how she utilized her activist and public policy background as a way to embody being a strong and confident journalist in the stories she publishes. One key statement I took away from Aarti is that activism had taught her the significance of deeply researching and understanding a concept before speaking about it in confidence. I resonated with this statement because it’s a principle I’ve always practiced, where I’d rather do my homework on a topic before I openly talk about it in conversations or in my work.

Another part of the video interview I enjoyed was listening to Aarti’s tips and advice for all of us public relations and communications students. One piece of advice that she offered for PR professionals was when she mentioned the significance of exhibiting “genuine curiosity” for pitching a press release. I found this fascinating because I’ve learned and personally experienced this in prior internships, but the way Aarti phrases this is unique yet important. She explained how one part of a PR professional’s job is to build relationships based on intellectual interests and that she will be more interested in talking to a PR professional if they seem smart and that she can learn from them. This new perspective allowed me to reflect on my own experience of working in public relations and helped me visualize what improvements I could make in my methods and techniques in order to further my career and strengthen my professional skills.

I am extremely grateful to have been introduced to someone as amazing and inspiring as Aarti, because hearing her story and advice not only empowered me to improve my PR skills, but also inspired me to utilize various aspects in my life that I’m passionate about. I’ve often felt conflicted on which professional field I want to enter after I graduate college, since I am interested in both of my majors: political science and public relations. However, Aarti’s story served as a significant reminder that finding our “voice” or finding this answer is not always immediate, and that sometimes will only reveal itself later on in our career as something we might’ve never initially expected. This reminder is something I will now carry with me as I continue to navigate my career with the hopes that I can find my true voice and have the same impact as Aarti where I can inspire others through my work to do the same.

Click here to read more of Aarti's published work at NPR, and connect with her on Instagram and Twitter.