6 minute read
Telling Stories That Matter
Pursuing her dream career, Shriya Bhattacharya ’18 is using her voice to tell meaningful stories in the world of journalism.
By Adrienne S. Harris
With the confidence she developed at Agnes Scott College, Shriya Bhattacharya ’18 is building a successful career telling stories that reflect her identity and passions. One of the most important lessons Bhattacharya learned at Agnes Scott is that there are no limitations to who she can be and what she can achieve – that no dream is too big to pursue. So, even with no formal journalism training, she is living in New York City and working successfully as a freelance writer and editor.
“Being in a college with women who were pursuing their passions had a huge influence on how I saw myself. It really helped with my self-confidence,” she says. “Agnes Scott instilled in me that I could do anything. I began to view myself as a leader and a self-starter, as someone who was worthy of achieving success, professionally and personally.”
Ironically, when Bhattacharya was applying to colleges, Agnes Scott was not on her radar. She was born in Philadelphia and lived in New Jersey, and when she was 12, her parents moved the family to Kolkata, India, where they are from. Bhattacharya attended high school there and decided she wanted to be a journalist, so she had narrowed her prospective colleges to 12 U.S. schools with journalism programs.
The day that the Agnes Scott admissions team visited Bhattacharya’s high school in India, she was absent.
“I didn’t meet the admissions counselor or see the presentation, but I heard about this college from my friends,” she says. “They called me and said, ‘Shriya, this is an amazing women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia. You have to check it out.’”
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
During her first year at Agnes Scott, Bhattacharya was enrolled in an introductory international relations course and discovered a new area of academic and professional interest.
“That became my favorite class. I was so riveted by the subject matter and the professor,” she says. “I loved it because I view myself as a global citizen. I thought that if I chose to major in something this fascinating, I would be carving out a path for myself that I felt was natural.”
Bhattacharya’s first job after graduating from Agnes Scott was at the United Nations Foundation. She started as a coordinator and was promoted to a program associate at the Universal Access Project, which protects and strengthens U.S. leadership on global sexual and reproductive health care, rights and justice. She enjoyed her work and even envisioned herself one day being director of UN Women.
But somehow, she could never seem to escape the lure of journalism.
On a UN Foundation Press Fellowship to Vancouver, British Columbia, the journalists she traveled with told Bhattacharya that with her organizational and people skills, she would make a great journalist—and they stressed that the industry needed more storytellers from diverse backgrounds.
“That was when the thought of journalism first reentered my mind,” she says, “but I brushed it away when I went back to reality after the trip.”
Later, on another work trip to Bangalore, India, Bhattacharya was asked to help interview women
factory workers about their sexual and reproductive health care services and write their stories for the Universal Access Project website. She loved it. And this time, she did not brush away the idea of being a journalist. Instead, she started pursuing opportunities to write on her own time.
Bhattacharya’s first freelance venture was as a writer for Brown Girl Magazine, an online publication targeted to the South Asian diaspora. Her piece received great response, and she became a regular, albeit unpaid, contributor.
Then in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“With restrictions on travel and not having to commute to work, I had more time to reevaluate what I wanted to do with my life and seriously explore journalism as a career,” she says.
Bhattacharya reached out to journalists and editors she admired to ask for career advice. Through their mentorship, she learned how to develop and pitch story ideas. In addition to her day job at the UN Foundation, she became a freelance writer and editor on the side.
In December 2020, after she had been successful as a freelancer with a few publications, Bhattacharya decided to try applying for a full-time journalism position. At around the same time, she launched a youth vertical at Brown Girl Magazine, recruited writers and became the section’s lead editor.
In April 2021, Bhattacharya was offered a three-month fellowship at Washingtonian, a publication targeted to people who live and work in the nation’s capital. Although it was only a temporary assignment, the fellowship allowed her to shift completely into journalism—an opportunity she could not resist. She left her job at the UN Foundation and has not looked back.
In addition to Brown Girl Magazine and Washingtonian, Bhattacharya’s bylines have appeared in Business Insider, Teen Vogue, Dance Magazine, Prism, Ms. Magazine and other publications.
“People trust me to share their stories. That’s why I do what I do,” she says. “As a freelance journalist, I can write about any subject that I deem should be written about— whether that’s reproductive health care, youth activism or South Asian culture—there is no restriction.”
“Agnes Scott taught me how to find my voice,” she says. “Being able to use my voice in this way [as a journalist] now is a privilege that I don’t take lightly, because so many other people in this world aren’t able to use their voices, especially women and people of color. Journalism is my way of using that voice to give these people the platform they need to share their stories.”
