Indira S. Somani, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Journalism with Washington and Lee University. She brings ten years of broadcast journalism experience as a news producer to the classroom.  She has been a writer and producer of financial broadcasts for CNBC, and a senior producer for "Early Today," an NBC network newscast.  She has also been a show and field producer for WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C., where she won the prestigious Gracie Allen Award for the "Working Woman" portrait series.  She has been a leader of the South Asian Journalists Association, where she has also won several "Outstanding" awards on her coverage of South Asians in North America.  Somani has also produced content for dot com sites and documentaries.  In an academia, Somani was an Assistant Professor of Broadcast Journalism with American University's School of Communication.  Somani earned her Master of Science in Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University.  She earned her doctorate from the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park, where she also taught Broadcast News Producing, and was a teaching assistant for Media Literacy.  Her dissertation studied the effect of satellite television on the Asian Indian community in the United States.  At Washington and Lee she teaches Broadcast Producing, Broadcast Reporting, Media, Race and Gender and Cross-cultural Documentary Filmmaking.

Leena Jayaswal is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington DC.  She is head of the Photography Concentration.  She has also lectured on radical media internationally.   She received her MFA in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art and two BA’s in Visual Media and Anthropology from American University.  Her photography has been nationally recognized in galleries around the country, including the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, The Washington Project for the Arts/ Corcoran Gallery of Art, Arlington Arts Center, Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Lexington Art League and the International Visions Gallery.  Her slides are a part of the collection of the Asian American Arts Centre in New York.  She has worked for famed photographer, Mary Ellen Mark, and with the Sandra Berler Gallery for many years.  Her films have been screened in various film festivals around the country. “An Impression: Dischord Records” was honored as the Best Selected Juror Film at the 2nd Annual Small International Film Festival at the Berkeley Art Center, in California and has screened in other juried film festivals, including the Electric City Film Fest, Miami Independent Film and Music, Delray Beach Film Festival, DC Meets Delhi Film Festival, National Museum of Women in the Arts Film Festival and DC Independent Film Festival just to name a few.

photo by Preston Merchant