At Hamilton Ashley Ramcharan ’20 majored in sociology, minored in math and Africana studies, and pursued another crucial element of her education — an exploration of her cultural identity. Now she’s found a job where she can continue exploring.
She is both South Asian and Caribbean; her parents, who are of Indian descent, originally come from Guyana. Ramcharan’s interest in both strands of her identity began before she entered Hamilton and shaped her pursuits on College Hill. She joined the South Asian Student Association and the Black and Latinx Student Union, and she helped revive the Caribbean Student Association, serving as its president her senior year.
Newly graduated, Ramcharan has just started a position that fits her in a way she’d never imagined. She’s working freelance as an assistant editor in the Indo-Caribbean department at Brown Girl Magazine, which was created by and for South Asian women. Ramcharan discovered the digital publication as she was scouring LinkedIn, and wishes she had known about it sooner — and that the generation coming up behind her will find out about it.
“I’ve never seen just something strictly devoted to the South Asian diaspora and their narrative,” she says.
She’d already received post-grad summer internship funding from the College Career Center, and she reached out to the magazine to work there, but didn’t hear back in time. Ramcharan landed an internship with U.S. Congressman Paul Tonko, and later, when the magazine got back to her, she was offered the editing opportunity.
She says she’ll be the first set of eyes on stories that come through the Indo-Caribbean department, giving them an initial edit and suggesting headlines. She’s about to start her training but she’s already had a chance to be part of a group conversation with the stars of the new Netflix show Indian Matchmaking. “One of the stars is Guyanese, and her presence in the show has been huge for the Indo-Caribbean community,” Ramcharan says.
Long term, she wants a career that focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusion, possibly in marketing. She considers the magazine experience a “passion project” that will open doors for her. It’s not a role she expected, she says, but the Career Center workshops she attended, the public speaking, and the organizations she was involved with at Hamilton, have prepared her to handle it.
The most exciting part of working with Brown Girl Magazine?
“Having that younger generation in mind and having the platform to talk about perspectives that are not really present in the media. Having that representation, I think, is super important,” Ramcharan says.
