Onscreen, a pair of hands stirs chaat masala, dhaniya powder, and other spices together before sprinkling the mixture onto a plate of fish. The video isn’t from a cooking network but the YouTube channel of Nirnaya Lohani called Naya Fusion Food.
“We don’t like to eat plain, bland food,” Lohani says, and her recipes reflect her preference for strong flavors. She began creating content for her channel while working from home during summer 2020. “I would put these pictures of our food on Instagram, but then I thought, ‘I’m going to start documenting these so my daughter can use them when she grows up,’” Lohani explains. “I inherited my passion for cooking from my parents and wanted to pass it on to my daughter.”
Just as Lohani adapts her traditional recipes to fit her tastes, she has learned through her career to adapt to a variety of cultures. She recalls that one valuable aspect of her BYU Marriott education was the opportunity to attend BYU and observe the Honor Code while not being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “That experience provided perspective on being able to adapt to different environments, which is good from a career perspective,” she says. “Your workplace could be nothing like you expect it to be, so learning to adjust to that is essential.”
Lohani graduated in information systems in 2007 and accepted a position in California with KPMG as a contract compliance services associate. A few years later, she managed a department of thirty people at KPMG Global Services in Bangalore, India, for a year and a half. “Understanding and learning the cultural differences to lead and manage the team was a big part of my success there,” she says. “I worked with local leaders to restructure the team to bring in the right talent to help drive success for the team. Mentoring and coaching each of these individuals to help them identify their individual goals and career paths was my proudest achievement.”
After she returned to the California office in a managerial position, Lohani was promoted to director of major projects and contract advisory. In June 2019 she took a position with LinkedIn as a senior project manager in Sunnyvale, California. She also volunteers as the co-lead of her office’s chapter of Women@LinkedIn, where “we are focused on building a community of women to support each other,” she explains.
Lohani met her husband, Avishek Sharma, who is also a BYU graduate, shortly after moving to California. The couple has one daughter and lives in Mountain View, California, where Lohani spends her free time hiking, reading books, listening to podcasts, playing with her daughter and, of course, creating recipes. She also enjoys trying new food and maintains an elite status on Yelp, a business-review website.
In addition, Lohani serves as a board member of the Santi School Project, a nonprofit organization that provides teacher training and educational support to schools in Nepal, especially focusing on girls’ education. “Once you educate girls, that information keeps passing on to the entire family,” Lohani says. A Nepalese immigrant herself, she says that her success has come because of her community just as much as her own personal efforts. “Hard work and determination go a long way,” she says. “But invest in yourself by surrounding yourself with a diverse set of people and develop relationships with them.”
