Our Team
Ami Majmudar is a teacher, author, storyteller, dancer, and choreographer. Ami earned a degree in English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, followed by a Master’s Degree in Education from the University of California at Davis. Ami began her career as a high school English teacher. She has taught diverse groups of students, including neurodivergent and neurotypical students. Her classroom experience includes college preparatory classes and English language learning instruction, at charter schools and public high schools across Ohio.
While Ami was home, raising her three children, she began teaching classical Indian dance, Bharatanatyam. Ami teaches her students a rigorous dance form through her dance school, Anjali Dance Center, giving them ways to connect to their ancient heritage and share their art with the community. Ami has conceptualized, choreographed, taught, and presented a variety of thematic dance pieces and productions combining dance, drama, and storytelling. A writer and storyteller, Ami writes stories, teaching units, and novels. Her debut novel, The Torchbearers, published by Penguin India, was shortlisted for the Neev Book Award for Distinguished Children’s Literature.
As an Ohio Teaching Artist, Ami teaches writing, India’s vibrant cultural heritage, and dance. She has worked with wide audiences in schools, libraries, and art centers, through workshops and lecture-demonstrations, easily connecting with children and adults of all backgrounds through the universal language of stories, movement, dance, and human emotions.
Ami Majmudar, M.Ed.
Dr. Indu Viswanathan has spent over twenty years in education, a journey that began as a NYC student teacher against the backdrop of September 11, 2001. Working globally in program design, teaching, and teacher education, her career has taken her from New York public schools to Ecole Française Internationale de Bombay and educational NGOs like Teach for India, Akanksha, and Nouvelle Vie Haiti. As Director of Research for YES! For Schools (now SKY Schools), she designed methods to measure the effect of meditation, pranayama, and social-emotional learning on fostering well-being and healthy school climates.
Indu’s journey has been shaped by diverse experiences, from designing programs across K-12 and higher education to teacher education at Teachers College. A dedicated student of spiritual and humanitarian leader His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar for nearly twenty years, Indu grounds her work and life in His teachings of compassion and love.
Indu holds a Doctorate in Education and a Master's in Elementary Education from Teachers College and a BA in Economics from Cornell University. Her work emphasizes culturally sustaining pedagogy and heritage education. As an educational ethnographer, she is dedicated to understanding how heritage communities enrich today’s education, fostering environments that support social cohesion and belonging.
Indu serves as Director of Education at the Hindu University of America, where she designs innovative programs that bring timeless wisdom to uplift society. She is the devoted mother of two wonderful sons and one mischievous rescue dog, Bhima.
Indu Viswanathan, Ed.D.
Our Story
We grew up on opposite sides of the United States—Indu on the East Coast in New York and Ami on the West Coast in the San Francisco Bay Area. As public school students, we shared a common experience: being surrounded by diverse classmates yet never seeing our heritage represented accurately or respectfully in established curricula. In both our lives, a teacher eventually invited us to share our lived experiences, expanding the classroom's learning in meaningful ways.
Our journeys have been shaped first by our experiences as first-generation Indian and Hindu American students, and then by our time as classroom teachers. We believe in the classroom as a space for ‘windows and mirrors,’ where students can both see themselves and broaden their understanding through stories rooted in diverse experiences. As we pursued advanced degrees in education, we also deepened our roots through studies of our spiritual heritage. When we met, our conversations spanned from ancient epics to the realities of parenting teenagers and storytelling in the classroom—all surprisingly connected in theme.
From our shared love of teaching, teacher education, and curriculum design, an idea was seeded. Roots Education Design is the cultivation of this idea, nourished by a grounded friendship and a professional partnership dedicated to honoring the dignity of teaching, learning, and the classroom.
