Eleven Years in the Field, Ramani Sripada Affirms Her Commitment to Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islander Health.
From the Trenches by Noel Alumit
Ramani Sripada is a slender woman with big brown eyes. She has the kind of optimism that one might associate with a recent graduate. At first glance, she might not be taken as an eleven-year veteran in the fight against AIDS, doing remarkable work on local and national levels for those affected and infected with HIV. All in all, Ms. Sripada has fifteen years of community organizing, coalition building, and social change experience.
“I was raised in New England,” she says, brought up by progressive parents who were originally from Andrah Pradesh, South India. She says, “My father was a research biochemist, and my mother worked in accounting. My parents were also politically liberal and raised us to be independent thinkers. They were not materialists nor did they believe in conspicuous consumption. We lived modestly and were encouraged to achieve academically.”
She’d had a strong work ethic from the start. “I started working when I was twelve years-old,” she says, “babysitting in my neighborhood, eventually providing services for four different families.” And she’d always had a sense of working on matters of social importance. “My priority was to work on issues of race, class and gender discrimination, including issues of immigrant rights, worker rights, sexual assault, domestic violence, and incest.”
Ms. Sripada received her bachelor’s degree in social thought and political economy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and her master’s degree in applied urban anthropology at City College, New York City. It was in graduate school that she had her first encounter with the AIDS community. She began doing work for God’s Love We Deliver. “I volunteered in a kitchen, chopping vegetables for meals to be delivered to people living with HIV/AIDS who were in the final stages of the disease. My closest friend in New York City, who I spent the majority of my free time with, also disclosed to me that he was HIV-positive. We were the same age and shared many of the same interests.”
She returned to Boston and got a job at the Multicultural AIDS Coalition as its Asian HIV/AIDS Health Educator. She eventually moved to the Massachusetts Asian and Pacific Islanders for Health (MAP). She is the director of Programs and Capacity Building. MAP is a non-profit, community-based organization that mobilizes, educates, and advocates for Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islander health improvements—particularly in HIV/AIDS and sexual health. They envision an inclusive, multicultural society with optimal health for Asians, South Asians, and Pacific Islanders.
After eleven years in AIDS, not every day has been rosy, but she appreciates them. She said, “I think that everyone goes through challenging times in work life and I have faced issues of burnout, interpersonal clashes and organizational structure transitions. That being said, I love my job. I always come back to the question of: Do I enjoy what I do? Do I like the people I work with? Can I express my values and beliefs? Am I making a difference? Can I express my talents and skills? Am I happy to go to work in the morning? The answer has always been ‘yes.’”
There are other things that keep her going. “I also enjoy in my life good friends, the kind that have my back. I have two children that love me unconditionally and parents who are proud of me. My sister, brother, nieces, and nephew all provide me with a full life and I am lucky to have such close friends within my family network. I have always said people who do work in HIV are some of the most thoughtful, intelligent, creative folks I know. It also makes a great difference to have a collaborative leader, such as my executive director and my supervisor, Jacob Smith Yang, who inspires and motivates me all the time.”
Ramani has a sober outlook on who and what it takes to work in this field. “I don’t believe this work, the HIV/AIDS field, is for everyone. It takes courage, leadership, advocacy skills, and perseverance.” She has her ways of maintaining herself in the day to day workforce of HIV. “To keep motivated I make sure to engage in meaningful dialogue with my colleagues and friends. I have always been pretty healthy and continue to practice yoga and am an avid reader.”
However, it is her family and career that keep her going. “Truly my kids keep me real—true to myself and work on being a better person. At the end of the day I do feel satisfied, that I have made a difference, that the work that I do is transforming not only the public health field but the quality of life for Asians and Pacific Islanders at risk for and living with HIV/AIDS, and in doing so I transform my life as well. Anything and everything is possible.”
Noël Alumit wrote the novel Letters to Montgomery Clift; Talking to the Moon, his second novel, came out in February 2007. He has been published in USA Today, The Advocate, OutTraveler, and others. He works for the Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team (APAIT) and maintains a literary blog: www.thelastnoel.blogspot.com.
July 2007
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