Our Team

We are immensely grateful to our past steering commitee members for their contribution and dedication to Friends of Shelter Associates’s early years.

Current Steering Committee

Sunil Bhatia, Chair

sunil team pageSunil Bhatia, Ph.D. founded Friends of Shelter Associates (FSA), a local chapter of the Indian nonprofit organization, Shelter Associates in 2005. Sunil Bhatia is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Director of the Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy at Connecticut College. He has published over 20 articles and book chapters on issues related to language, self, immigrant identity and cultural psychology. His most recent book, American Karma: Race, Culture, and Identity and the Indian Diaspora (New York University Press, 2007), is based on an extensive, two-year ethnography of the middle-class Indian diaspora in Southern Connecticut.
In 2009, Sunil Bhatia received the Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty Service Award given to a faculty who upholds the legacy of Dr. King’s work with their demonstrated commitment to social justice and serving underrepresented communities either on campus and/or the New London community. Professor Bhatia received the 2006 Sigmund Koch Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology award is presented to a psychologist each year who is within 10 years of having earned a doctorate degree and has made promising contributions to theoretical or philosophical psychology. In September 2005, Sunil received Connecticut College’s prestigious John King Teaching Award. In 2001, the students of Unity House awarded Bhatia the Tyrone Ferdnance Award for excellence in teaching and community service. Read “Achievements and Awards: So What? Now What?, his remarks on the occasion of the college’s Honors and Awards Ceremony 2006.


Kamille Gentles-Peart

Kamille Gentles-Peart, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Global Communication at Roger Williams University. She is a first-generation immigrant, born and raised in Jamaica, W.I. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her scholarship addresses how cultural identities and subjectivities inform intercultural and mediated communication practices. Her current research explores how West Indian immigrant women in the U.S. engage with mainstream U.S. media, and how it informs the construction of their identity. Her most recent publication, an edited volume titled Re-Constructing Place and Space: Media, Power, and Identity in the Constitution of Caribbean Diasporas, was awarded the Outstanding Book Award from the African American Communication and Culture Division of the National Communication Association. Kamille  has been working with FSA since 2012 and helps with communication and event planning.

Apurv Gupta

apurvApurv Gupta, MD, MPH  has been actively working with FSA since 2008. He is currently a principal at Atria BPH, a healthcare services and consulting company.  In 2009, he received the AMA’s Foundation’s Leadership Award and Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business. Dr. Gupta is a Trustee of IMANE and Co-Chair of Akshaya Patra (Boston Chapter). Dr Gupta is responsible for developing FSA’s Philanthropic Opportunities.

Gyan Pareek

gyanGyan Pareek, MD was inspired by Dr. Bhatia’s vision of FSA and its parent organization Shelter Associates. He is passionately committed to “Sanitizing Slums” and serves as FSA’s Treasurer. Dr. Pareek is the Director of Minimally Invasive Urologic Surgery at Brown Medical School, Providence, RI.

 

 

Anjali Ram

Anjali Ram, Ph.D. is a professor of Global Communication at Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI. Her publications and presentations explore what it means to be transnational and intercultural in a world that is experiencing the political, economic, cultural, and social ramifications of new communication technologies and intense cross-border migrations. In particular she examines the construction and communication of mediated gendered identity in the Indian diaspora. Her research has appeared in journals such as Women’s Studies in Communication, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Human Development, Mind, Cultural and Activity, Cultural and Psychology and in edited books  such as Mediated Women,  Communicating Ethnic and Cultural Identity, and Sociology of the Diaspora: A Reader among others. She has been involved in FSA since its inception and works on communication and event planning.

Karin Wetherill

karin1Karin Wetherill has a personal commitment to volunteerism and philanthropy both in her local community and on behalf of needy causes worldwide. Karen is Associate Director of Kids First, a Rhode Island non-profit organization working to improve the nutritional well being of children. She has been working with FSA since 2008 and is responsible for event planning for FSA.

 

 

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Sunil Bhatia, Chair
Kamille Gentles-Peart
Apurv Gupta
Gyan Pareek
Anjali Ram
Karin Wetherill

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