Anjuli Sastry Krbechek
Anjuli Sastry (she/her) is a 2021 Nieman Journalism Foundation Visiting Fellow. During her fellowship, Sastry will work on a two-pronged project to increase diversity within public radio. On air, she will launch a new audio and video project to elevate voices of color across NPR radio shows, podcasts and visual platforms. Behind the scenes, Sastry will create a guide for mentorship programs that foster retention and support employees of color in journalism.
Before starting her fellowship, Anjuli was a producer on the NPR podcast and weekend radio show It's Been a Minute with Sam Sanders. In that role, Sastry cut interviews, wrote scripts, booked guests, scored music, planned future coverage, led editorial direction of episodes and more. She's produced episodes that look at gun violence in Oakland, a deep dive into the history of drag culture and interviews with folks like John Legend and Jennifer Lopez. She also produced live shows in places like Iowa and Chicago and directed weekly tapings of It's Been a Minute.
Sastry started her career at NPR on the flagship newsmagazine All Things Considered. In this role, Sastry led the show's social media team, was the lead producer for the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots series and reported in the Southwest and Mexico with Melissa Block and Elissa Nadworny for the special series Our Land.
She's worked as a producer for Marketplace and Press Play at KCRW, and her work has appeared in NPR's Life Kit, Morning Edition, Weekend All Things Considered and ABC News.
Sastry is a co-founder of the Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color Mentorship Program at NPR. She and her co-founders received the NPR Diversity Success employee award for their work in 2018. She was also part of the inaugural 2018 Online News Association Journalism Mentorship Collaborative and has spoken about mentorship at Werk It: A Women's Podcast Festival and the Third Coast International Audio Festival.
In 2019, Sastry was named an AIR New Voices Scholar.
Hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area, Sastry earned her bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with honors from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
-
New York Times food writer Priya Krishna and her mom, Ritu Krishna, co-authored the cookbook Indian-ish together in 2019. They discuss how food traditions change based on where you live.
-
Author Luvvie Ajayi Jones talks to Tiffany Aliche about changing their given Nigerian names to more American ones in order to assimilate, and what their given versus chosen names mean to them today.
-
Food writer Priya Krishna and her mother, Ritu Krishna, discuss influences on their Indian cooking. They explore assimilation through food and why recipes like dal represent comfort for their family. -
Colette Baptiste-Mombo and her family moved to an all-white suburb at the height of the civil rights era. She shares how racist attacks changed her life, and how she deals with generational trauma. -
César Magaña Linares is a temporary protected status, or TPS, holder from El Salvador. As an activist and law student, he's redefining what it means to be an immigrant, beyond the headlines.
-
Where are you really from? It's a question that immigrant communities of color across generations are often asked. In this series, we answer that question on our own terms, one conversation at a time. -
Assimilation has a cost. As a third generation Chinese American, NPR Short Wave's Emily Kwong is rediscovering the language her father once knew, and what that means for where she comes from. -
In East Oakland, Calif., where gun violence is chronic, some are grateful that after Parkland, America pays more attention to the issue. But as an East Oakland youth says, "It's our time to talk." -
Nguyen and Thi Tran started Starry Kitchen out of desperation. Now the couple has a new book with their best recipes and stories of their adventures in the culinary world. -
IKEA exiled designers to a research station in Utah modeled after a living situation on the planet Mars. They hope the experience will inspire them to create similar spaces around the world.
