Anand Giridharadas is an author and columnist, writing about a world in transition. He is the author of “India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking,” about returning to the India his parents left. He writes the “Currents” column for The New York Times and its global edition, the International Herald Tribune, and also writes for The New York Times Magazine. He has reported from India, China, Norway, Haiti, Brazil, Colombia, Nigeria and the United States.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he was raised there, in Paris, France, and outside Washington, D.C., and educated at the University of Michigan, Oxford and Harvard. He is a former consultant for McKinsey & Company and later reported from Bombay for the Herald Tribune and The Times for four and a half years. He wrote about India’s transformation, Bollywood, corporate takeovers, terrorism, outsourcing, poverty and democracy. He was appointed a columnist in 2008, writing the “Letter from India”series before the “Currents” role.
He first interned for The New York Times at age 17, writing two articles on money and politics under the tutelage of Jill Abramson. He moved to Bombay after college, in 2003, to work as a consultant for McKinsey & Company, where he served on projects advising the local government on urban development, a pharmaceutical company on organizational redesign and leadership development, and Indian and Chinese businesses on their internationalization strategies.
He has appeared regularly on television and the radio in the United States and internationally, including on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, “The Daily Show” and other forums. He has lectured at Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the Sydney Opera House, the United Nations, the Asia Society, PopTech and Google. (To organize a talk, you can contact his speaking agent here.) He has been honored twice by the Society of Publishers in Asia for opinion and feature writing, by the South Asian Journalists Association for business reportage, and by the Indo-American Society for promoting cross-cultural understanding.
In 2011, he was named a Henry Crown fellow of the Aspen Institute.