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Belong. Grow. Thrive.

We are thrilled to celebrate SAYA's remarkable 28 years of impact on Saturday, May 18, 2024!

SAYA’s gala recognizes the significance, contribution, and achievements of those in the community who leverage their privilege and platform towards positive societal change.

The annual gala offers an opportunity to raise critical unrestricted funds, which helps us grow the number of youth we are able to provide vital support to each year, and ultimately, increase our impact. The evening includes cocktails, dinner, and dancing, as well as an exciting pledge drive.

For corporate or in-kind sponsorship opportunities, please contact Saphia Najafee, Chief Development Officer.

 

Sponsorship Levels

    • Premier Seating

    • Placement of logo on Step & Repeat

    • Display of company name/logo on gala materials

    • Website recognition

    • 1 table - 10 tickets

    • Premium seating

    • Display of company name/logo on gala materials

    • Website recognition

    • 1 table - 10 tickets

    • Prime seating

    • Display of company name/logo on gala materials

    • Website recognition

    • 1 table - 10 tickets

    • Preferred seating

    • Display of company name/logo on gala materials

    • Website recognition

    • 1 table - 10 tickets

    • Display of company name/logo on gala materials

    • Website recognition

    • 1 table - 10 tickets

 

Additional Info

To pay by check, please make it out to South Asian Youth Action and mail to:

South Asian Youth Action
attn: Saphia Najafee
54-05 Seabury Street
Elmhurst, NY 11373

To send your donation through wire or ACH transfer, please email SAYA@saya.org.

South Asian Youth Action is a 501(c)3 charitable organization.

Contribution beyond the cost of attendance may be tax deductible, as allowable by law. Acknowledgement letters will state the portion of the contribution that is tax deductible.

Our Honorees

Sonny Kalsi

Sonny Kalsi is the Co-CEO of BGO, a leading global real estate investment management advisor with ~$83 billion across 28 worldwide offices with 1,300 employees. He co-founded GreenOak Real Estate in 2010, organically growing assets to $12 billion in 10 countries with 100+ employees. Prior to that, he served as Global Co-Head of Morgan Stanley’s Real Estate Investing (MSREI) and President of Morgan Stanley Real Estate Funds. Sonny holds a degree from Georgetown University, is actively involved with the school’s board, as well as serving on the boards of the Asia Society and the Hirshhorn Museum.

Priya Parker

Priya Parker is helping us take a deeper look at how anyone can create collective meaning in modern life, one gathering at a time. She is a facilitator, strategic advisor, acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, and the host of the New York Times podcast, Together Apart. Parker has spent 15 years helping leaders and communities have complicated conversations about community and identity and vision at moments of transition. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, southern Africa, and India.

Parker’s The Art of Gathering (Riverhead, 2018) has been named a Best Business Book of the year by Amazon, Esquire Magazine, NPR, the Financial Times, 1-800-CEO-READS, and Bloomberg. She has spoken on the TED Main Stage, and her TEDx talk on purpose has been viewed over 1 million times. Parker’s work has been featured in numerous outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, TED.com, Forbes.com, Real Simple Magazine, Oprah.com, Bloomberg, Glamour, the Today Show, and Morning Joe. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and two children.

Anand Giridharadas

Anand Giridharadas is the author of The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy (2022), Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018), The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas (2014), and India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking (2011). A former foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for more than a decade, he has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time, and he is the publisher of the newsletter The Ink.

He has spoken on stages around the world and taught narrative journalism at New York University. He is a regular on-air political analyst for MSNBC. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he was raised there, in Paris, France, and in Maryland, and educated at the University of Michigan, Oxford, and Harvard. He has received the Radcliffe Fellowship, the Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award, Harvard University’s Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanism in Culture, and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Priya Parker, and their two children.

 Entertainment

Headliner

Ali Sethi

Ali Sethi is a New York-based writer, composer and performer best known for his ‘ragaton’ blockbuster single ‘Pasoori’, which topped Spotify’s Global Viral chart in 2022 and was declared Google’s most hummed-to-search song of that year.

Blending traditional South Asian melodies with global beats, and drawing on “folk” and “woke” iconographies to tell powerful tales of identity, Sethi’s work has been described as “stealthily subversive” by The New Yorker and has earned him a spot on TIME’s 100 Next list. As described by TIME Magazine, his music is praised for showing that “differences of culture, language, religion and gender do not need to be antagonistic; they can, and always have, enriched us, and given us some of our greatest works of art.”

 

EMCees

 

Sheetal Sheth

Sahib Singh

 
 

Music & DJ

 

DJ Ash G