Our writer, Saumya Monga, interviewed the founder and CEO of Phulkari Co, Gurlynn Gill. We discussed what it means to be a South Asian woman running her own company in Silicon Valley, Gill’s desire for collaboration, and spotlighting other Desi creatives in the Bay. Phulkari Co. just celebrated their second anniversary since their first launch and continue to break the barriers of Desi American fashion.

I am sitting in the middle of the fifth row of the Curran Theater in San Francisco. Elegantly shaped metals surround a looming stage, lit to resemble twilight. It is thirty minutes in to Soft Power, the brand new satirical stage experience, described in one account as “chocolate with a razer blade inside” and one unlike anything you’ve ever seen, created by Tony Award winner and AAPI arts hero David Henry Hwang and Tony Award winner Jeanine Tesori. The show focuses on Xue Xing, a Chinese executive in 2016 America, falling in love with a free-spirited U.S. leader, their relationship changing them and how they view their countries.