I’m a facilitator, strategic advisor, author, and lifelong curious student of how we come together.
I believe everyone has the ability to gather well. The moments we share—with friends, family, colleagues, and communities—shape how we connect, understand one another, and live together. Through my advisory work, facilitation, speaking, and writing, I help people create spaces for meaningful connection, honest conversation, and lasting change.
A LITTLE ABOUT ME
I’ve always been interested in how groups come together, how they break, how they come back together, and in what shape.
That curiosity began long before it became my work. I was born in Zimbabwe to an Indian mother and a white Midwestern American father. After my parents divorced, I grew up moving between two very different families and worldviews—experiencing firsthand what it meant to belong in more than one place while never fully fitting into either. Those early years sparked a lifelong fascination with conflict, connection, identity, and belonging.
As a student at the University of Virginia, I found a home in the field of conflict resolution through the mentorship of diplomat Harold “Hal” Saunders. Learning to facilitate dialogue across difference gave language and purpose to questions I’d been carrying for years, and set me on the path toward becoming a facilitator, advisor, and writer.
Today, I work with leaders, organizations, and communities as they navigate consequential gatherings, difficult conversations, and moments of transition. Whether facilitating a leadership retreat, advising an executive team, or designing a conversation across difference, I’m interested in creating the conditions for people to engage one another with greater intention, courage, and care.
That same inquiry has shaped my writing. The Art of Gathering explored how we create meaningful moments together. The Art of Fighting asks what becomes possible when we learn to engage conflict with greater wisdom, generosity, and humanity.
Across all of my work, I’m ultimately interested in one enduring question: How can we create the kinds of spaces that help us live better together?
At the heart of all my work is a simple belief: the quality of our collective life depends on the quality of the spaces we create together.
FIELDS OF STUDYThe questions I ask have led me across many disciplines. Together, they've shaped how I think about groups, relationships, organizations, and the ways we live together.
-
At the center of my work is the craft of facilitation. I help groups navigate consequential conversations by designing thoughtful processes, listening deeply, and paying close attention to the language, dynamics, and identities that emerge within a room. Whether working with six people or five thousand, I'm interested in creating the conditions for meaningful dialogue and collective possibility
-
My studies in political and social thought at the University of Virginia, followed by graduate work in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, continue to shape how I think about power, belonging, governance, and the ways people make meaning together. They remind me that every gathering exists within a broader social and cultural context.
-
Organizations are living systems shaped by relationships, shared purpose, and the people within them. My studies in organizational design, systems thinking, and collective intelligence at MIT introduced me to new ways of understanding how groups think, decide, and evolve. Since then, I've woven together these disciplines in my facilitation and advisory work, helping leaders and organizations navigate moments of crisis, transition, and change through high-integrity, human-centered processes that help people find their way forward.
-
Movement and the body have become an essential counterpart to my language-based and dialogic training. Through improvisation, theater, movement, and embodied practice, I've learned that leadership requires knowing when to lead and when to follow, how to pay attention to what's happening in the room, and how to read what people communicate beyond words. They remind me that meaningful connection isn't created through language alone—the body is always part of the conversation.
TRUSTED BY
Recent Press & Conversations
OUR COLLECTIVE LIFE
The life of a group matters now more than ever. We’re lonelier and more divided, yet we still don’t know how to gather well or fight well with the people in our lives. I believe these two skills — and they are learnable skills — are how we find our way back to each other.
JOIN PRIYA IN THE LIFE OF THE GROUP
Receive essays and join webinars and conversations exploring gathering, conflict, belonging, and the everyday moments that shape how we live together.
Explore Priya’s newest book, offering fresh insights and powerful stories that deepen how we understand conflict, connection, and the moments that shape our lives together.
Bring Priya into your organization through advisory, facilitation, or speaking engagements designed to help leaders and teams navigate meaningful moments with greater intention, courage, and care.
Put the ideas into practice with courses, guides, and facilitation tools designed to help you create more meaningful conversations and gatherings.
TAKE THE COURSEThe Art of Gathering Online Course
Over seven weeks, you'll learn the practical skills of The Art of Gathering by taking a real gathering in your life, from naming your purpose to crafting the invitation, so you end up with something that actually means something to the people in it.
Want to change the gathering culture of your organization? Sign up as a cohort!