VIJI SUNDARAM is currently on an extended sabbatical in India, working as a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media in Bangalore. Prior to this, she worked as a general assignment reporter for India-West, a weekly national newspaper based in the San Francisco Bay Area. After she graduated from Boston University in 1982, and before she moved to California, Sundaram worked for the Standard Times, a daily in New Bedford, MA., The Providence Journal (at its Massachusetts bureau in Fall River) and The Cape Cod Times in Hyannis. In between, she did a three-month stint as a visiting professor of journalism at the University of Madras. Before moving to the U.S. in 1982, Sundaram was a stringer for two years for the Voice of America in Madras. She also edited a religious monthly journal with a worldwide circulation. Born in India, Sundaram has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Stella Maris College, Madras, a diploma in journalism from the University of Madras, and a master's degree in print journalism from Boston University. Over the last six years, she has won three SAJA Journalism Awards, including one in 2002 for her national expose on McDonald's use of beef in its french fries (the story was later covered by major media outlets troughout the country). That same story also won her a New California Media first prize award for investigative journalism, her second NCM award in the last three years. Her coverage of the Berkeley landlord Lakireddy Balireddy sex scandal won India-West special recognition from SAJA in 2001. Sundaram teaches yoga and acu-yoga, and is a trained acupressurist. She is passionately fond of tennis and is an animal rights activist. She is a co-founder of Narika, a Berkeley, CA.,-based support group for South Asian victims of domestic violence. E-mail: vijiyoga@hotmail.com -30-