Meet Karabi

Dr. Karabi Acharya is writing a book about the experience of building identity and a sense of belonging among multiracial people. Karabi’s mother was a White American who grew up in Massachusetts of English and German ancestry. Her father became a refugee during the Partition of India, when he was forced to leave his home in what is now Bangladesh for Kolkata, India. Karabi was born in Brussels, Belgium and spent her childhood in Carbondale, Illinois, Bloomington, Indiana and Kolkata, India. Her interest in public health began while she was living in Kolkata seeing the extreme poverty that faced her on her daily walk to school. Growing up, she learned about all the things she was not: not American, not Indian, not Belgian, not White, not Black, not bilingual, not normal. She has been waiting for someone to write a book about how to be multiracial in the US: how to answer questions about where you are from, what boxes to check on the race questions, how not to lose yourself as you become a master cultural chameleon. When she tired of waiting for that book, she began to write it herself.

Karabi is a leading global public health practitioner with a strong interest in the health impacts of social isolation and loneliness. She’s spent over 25 years weaving together her expertise in anthropology, public health, adult learning and systems thinking to improve health and wellbeing around the world. Dr. Acharya has lived and worked in over 20 countries across Europe, Africa and South Asia with organizations that include the World Health Organization, UNICEF, World Bank, Ford Foundation, USAID. She is currently Senior Director of the Global Ideas for US Solutions portfolio at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted to health. She is a founding member of the RWJF Equity Leadership Group which is tasked with building a culture of equity, justice and belonging inside RWJF.

Dr. Acharya has written and spoken extensively on a host of issues relevant to health and wellbeing, including health equity, child health, infectious diseases, immunizations. Throughout her career, she has emphasized the importance not only of listening to marginalized people but shifting power to achieve a better world for all. She is the author of three book chapters, eleven peer-reviewed papers and presentations, and over twenty blog posts. She is the host of the ReImagined in America webinar series at RWJF and recently curated a series of articles with the Stanford Social Innovation Review focused on the imperative for learning globally to act locally.

 When her daughter was diagnosed with a rare progressive retinal disease, she founded Conquering Gyrate Atrophy to raise money for research for a cure. Conquering Gyrate Atrophy has provided research grants over $300,000 for the first research on gyrate atrophy in decades. Dr. Acharya serves on the Board of Trustees for Westtown School and leads the diversity, equity and inclusion committee.