JYOTI THOTTAM is a business reporter for Time magazine in New York. She joined the magazine in Jan. 2002 after working as a reporter at Time Inc's ON Magazine, a technology magazine, for almost two years.

She was president of SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association - one of the nation's most dynamic and largest journalists' associations - for 2001 and 2002. She continues to play an active role in the organization.

Before joining Time Inc in March 2000, Jyoti wrote about Queens, the most ethnically diverse county in the world, for the Times/Ledger Newspapers. She has a special interest in immigration and education and has written on those topics extensively. She has been honored by the Suburban Newspaper Association and the Inland Press Foundation for her work. A series she directed on the impact of school overcrowding on education in Queens won first place for in-depth reporting from the New York Press Association.

Jyoti graduated from Yale University in 1993 with a B.A. in religion and economics, and she has maintained an interest in the political economy and religions of South Asia ever since then. Occasionally, she gets back to New Haven, most recently to deliver a speech on "The Future of South Asian Political Participation in New York City" as part of the South Asianist Lecture Series at Yale.

She spent her childhood in Queens and in Houston, Texas. Her first job after college was working as a reporter for American City Business Journals in northern Florida, where she covered manufacturing and the regional economy. From there, she went to graduate school at Columbia, earning a master's degree in international affairs in 1997. Her paper "Reporting on Economic Issues in India" was published as part of a conference, "American Reporting on India and Pakistan" at Columbia University's Southern Asian Institute in April 1997.

After graduate school, she went to India, Thailand and Nepal, travelling and writing as a freelancer before coming back to New York in 1998. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Village Voice, Christian Science Monitor, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, San Francisco Chronicle, Voice of America radio, City Limits and Himal magazine.

Jyoti is the director of the New York screenings of Himal's "Travelling Film South Asia" documentary film festival, which she has organized since 1998.

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