Priya Ramanujam

Journalist & Editor

Canada

I love the art of storytelling, interviewing and feature writing.

Particularly passionate about telling stories focused on social justice, entrepreneurship, arts & culture, music, youth and women.

My work has appeared in: The Toronto Star, Urbanology Magazine, The Scarborough Mirror, Inside Toronto, LiisBeth, New Canadian Media, Canadian Immigrant, Today's Bride and Post City Magazines.

Twitter Icon LinkedIn Icon
Portfolio
The Globe and Mail
02/11/2018
LGBTQ-focused investing group Gaingels coming to Canada

"I know what you are." An investor said this to San Francisco-based entrepreneur Anthony Venus nearly 20 years ago, during one of his early dot-com-era ventures, and it has stuck with him ever since. "He obviously wasn't happy with me being gay," says Mr. Venus, now 45 and the co-founder and chief executive officer of YayPay Inc., a business-to-business fintech startup specializing in accounts receivable software.

LiisBeth
12/12/2017
Emily Does The Hustle - LiisBeth

Just over seven years ago, Emily Mills found herself up late, angsting about juggling what felt like "a zillion balls." She posted a picture of herself on Facebook working in the boardroom of her then-employer. The premise of her post: She was driven, always hustling, but she had reached a point of exhaustion.

Urbanology Magazine
01/01/2017
Amanda Parris: A Star is Born - Urbanology Magazine

When Amanda Parris first started as host of the Canadian Broadcast Corporation's "Exhibitionists", it was like starting from the bottom all over again. She'd spent a decade building up her name in Toronto amongst activist and artist circles as a grassroots community worker, hip-hop arts educator and theatre actress and playwright.

LiisBeth
12/07/2016
Black Foodie Turns The Table - LiisBeth

Shoddy treatment at a restaurant inspired Eden Hagos not to stay home but to go big with her business ideas. She sees huge potential in the Black Foodie brand and envisions it evolving into a web series or television show in the future.

Insidetoronto
MILLENNIAL MIND: Preparing students for the ‘real world’

“You’re probably going to change your career six or seven times in your life.” I can’t say I remember a lot from my days attending Scarborough’s Berner Trail Jr. P. S., but I do remember those words coming from my Grade 3 teacher’s mouth. At the time I didn’t have a clue as to what career I wanted for myself, let alone seven. What my Grade 3 teacher forgot to mention, though, was that even the concept of a career and what it meant would drastically change by the time we began our first...

LiisBeth
07/27/2016
Queer to their Boots - LiisBeth

Toronto's Kensington Market has long been the landing site of many of the migrant groups that help make the city one of the world's most vibrantly multicultural. On a Sunday in May, the funky market threw out the welcome mat to pioneers of a different kind-six innovative fashion companies producing lines that defy gender stereotypes.

Canadianimmigrant
Immigration shift from the econo-centric strategy re-balances program | Canadian Immigrant

The Liberal government's recently announced immigration strategy is a welcome first step to re-balancing the program, say several experts. "We are thrilled," says Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council for Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI). "For more than a decade, we saw a real shift away from families, and refugee protection for that matter, toward the economic class."

Urbanology Magazine
Mara Brock Akil: Making 'Relatable TV'

The year is 1994. A young, ambitious junior screenwriter, Mara Brock Akil, sits in a room with seasoned television executives discussing an upcoming episode of the short-lived sitcom “South Central” – a show about an African-American family’s everyday life in the Los Angeles area of the same name. It’s time for one of the male characters to write a letter expressing his ‘young love’ for a girl and the senior screenwriters are debating – which slowly turns into arguing – what the letter...

Newcanadianmedia
Making News Pay: Ethnic Media Offers Lessons

Ethnic media may have lessons to offer on connecting to audiences and providing diverse services as traditional news organizations seek new business models in order to make journalism profitable again. The growing challenges of sustaining a news outlet in today's market was the focus of a recent panel hosted by the Canadian Journalism Foundation, featuring the heads of three of the country's largest media outlets.

LiisBeth
06/07/2016
Gashanti Unity: Creating Things That Don't Exist - LiisBeth

Muna Ali cut her entrepreneurial teeth before she even started grade school, "playing business" at the side of the road near her grandmother's house in her birth city of Hargeysa, Somaliland. She identified her "market" of school children, recognizing what they needed (like candy, for example) and positioned herself strategically at the junction they all had to pass to get home to ensure traffic to her store.

Newcanadianmedia
Hopes, Challenges of Immigration Reflected on Stage

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni says the immigration experience helped make her the award-winning and best-selling Indian-American writer she is today. Her immigration story - which she calls "strong" and "powerful" - along with those of other immigrant women, are central themes in much of her work.

Urbanology Magazine
Stalley: Came a Long Way

When Stalley set out to record his latest mixtape, Saving Yusuf, it was time to return to the basics – sitting alone in a room, with just his mind, computer and some beats. “I wrote whatever came from the heart, whatever I felt like I wanted to express,” he shares, the day after the Toronto stop of his “Me to You Tour”. “That’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to be more free, I wanted to be myself.”

Newcanadianmedia
Scarborough Subway: Mayor Just Doesn't Get It

I find it insulting for Toronto Mayor John Tory to casually toss around the fact that more than half of Scarborough is foreign-born, and point the finger at his critics for not understanding how the transit experience impacts these immigrants. Fact is, he doesn't really understand either.

Newcanadianmedia
"Inequity and Exclusion are Tied to Race"

Immigration and the 'immigrant experience' are often used as a smokescreen to mask systemic racism and exclusion. This is according to Neethan Shan, executive director of the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA), who led a roundtable discussion titled "Equity and Inclusion Across Multiple Terrains" at the 18th National Metropolis Conference on Mar.