getting to know pankti Three of our 8th-Graders—Ella Beckstead, Julian Coleman, and Sona Kempner—sat down with Incoming Head of School Pankti Sevak during her December visit to 250 Valencia to talk San Francisco, Quaker values, and everyone’s favorite topic: food.
Sona: I’m Indian, too, and I was wondering how your Indian heritage has influenced your view of the world? Pankti: That’s a great question. You know, my parents really had so much pride in being Indian... So from a very young age, I was taught a lot of different traditions and I was raised speaking Guja-
rati—that’s my first language, not English. And so it’s always been a strong part of my identity and I was lucky as a child to get to spend a lot of time in India. I feel fortunate that a big part of my identity is being raised Hindu and listening to and reading stories about Indian mythology and understanding those stories as parables; they’ve been guideposts for me. I love the
way that those stories helped me to think about what it meant to be a good person from the time I was very little. Ella: How would you like to see the Friends community grow from where it is right now? Pankti: One thing I’ve heard a lot about on my last visit is how the page 11
