Pranjali Sirasao

Pranjali Sirasao is a linguist, researcher, educator, radio host, producer, and cultural curator based in California. Her work brings together language, technology, academia, media, and the arts to preserve, promote, and celebrate the rich linguistic and cultural heritage of South Asia.

Pranjali has held faculty positions at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, Davis, and Stanford University. She has also contributed to language engineering and artificial intelligence initiatives at Google and currently serves as a Lead Language Specialist at Apple, specializing in Hindi, Indian English, Urdu, and Marathi language technologies, localization, and linguistic engineering.

Since 2012, she has been the producer, content creator, and host of ChaiTime Radio, a weekly program on Stanford University’s KZSU 90.1 FM that reaches audiences around the world through multiple streaming platforms. Through in-depth conversations with internationally acclaimed artists, musicians, writers, scholars, scientists, and community leaders, the program explores South Asian literature, music, language, cinema, history, and contemporary cultural issues while fostering meaningful cross-cultural dialogue.

An active advocate for Hindi and Urdu literature, Pranjali co-founded Vishwa Hindi Jyoti, serving as its President in 2017, and continues to organize literary gatherings and cultural programs that provide a platform for poets, writers, musicians, and emerging artists. She is a co-organizer of Kavya Connection and the Hindi, Urdu, and Sufi Poetry & Literature Group in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she regularly curates concerts, poetry evenings, author interactions, and community events.

Pranjali serves on the Board of Directors of the Ethnic Arts Foundation, USA, an organization dedicated to preserving the centuries-old tradition of Mithila (Madhubani) painting. As part of this work, she contributed translations and editorial content to Mithila Reverie: Meditations on the Devanagari Script by renowned French artist Martin LeCoz. She also volunteers with the Sankara Eye Foundation in the USA and the Omkar Trust in Pune, India.

Her current research and documentation projects include translating Kabir bhajans with Padma Shri Prahlad Singh Tipaniya and documenting the lives, artistic traditions, and oral histories of Madhubani painters in Bihar, India. She is deeply committed to preserving India’s intangible cultural heritage by making it accessible to contemporary and global audiences.

Over the course of her career, Pranjali has produced and hosted hundreds of interviews, radio programs, concerts, literary events, and cultural initiatives featuring distinguished artists, authors, musicians, scientists, and thought leaders from around the world. Through her work in academia, technology, broadcasting, and the arts, she continues to build meaningful connections between cultures while advancing multilingualism, intercultural understanding, and the preservation of South Asian languages and traditions.

Pranjali is available for keynote talks, panel discussions, artist interviews, concert curation and emceeing, cultural programming, academic collaborations, language consulting, and media partnerships. She can be reached at [email protected]