Our Team
Leila Kashani-Sabet
As Brooklyn Program Manager, Leila Kashani-Sabet (لیلا کاشانی ثابت) serves as primary liaison with our Neighbors. She checks in monthly with Neighbor Team captains, facilitates monthly captains’ meetings, organizes our All Neighbor Gatherings, and builds the systems and processes that help GatherFor run day-to-day.
Leila’s background is an artist, actor, and facilitator (all of which she actively practices!). She brings roots her facilitation QTBIPOC-healing and dignity, in culture building, in anti-oppression principles, restorative and transformative justice frameworks. As a theater facilitator, she works closely with QTBIPOC youth and elders across New York City, empowering them to see performance as a vehicle for personal and social transformation. You can learn more about her and her body of work at leilakashani-sabet.com.
Brooklyn Program Manager
FounderTeju Ravilochan
Hi there. These bios normally describe past work experience. But I’d rather use this space to tell you that for years, I’ve been wrestling with the American Dream — especially the part that tells us we can be self-made. My parents immigrated to the US from India with $200 in their pockets. And yes, they did work very hard. Though my father was trained as a doctor, he worked at a factory and as a DJ to get by before he was able to get a full-time job in the US. My parents might not have been able to navigate life in a brand new country if my Uncle Suresh hadn’t given them a place to stay in Cleveland when they first arrived. They might have run out of the money to stay if a kind stranger named Dr. Bob Selker had not met my dad and then made a call that landed him his first job as a neurology resident at a hospital in Denver. They may have had to make choices between housing payments and other needs if they hadn’t qualified for affordable housing, which meant they were able to buy a home in 1988 with a $500 down payment.
You could look at my parents and think: “wow, they ‘made it’ even though they started with nothing! It’s the classic American story!” But that’s not the whole story. The whole story includes countless acts of community and kindness supporting their settling in the US.
My life is no different. For example: when this pandemic hit, I was mid-transition without a job and a place to live. My parents were there for me, and I stayed with them for several years.
What if my parents hadn’t had the support they received? What if I hadn’t? How many of us long for the knowledge that there are people who have our back?
What if we decided it was time to tell a different cultural story - one that centered the truth that we need each other? What if your neighbors had your back when you lost your job, when you couldn’t afford rent, when you needed someone to watch your kids, when you needed someone to talk to? Making this story real is the reason GatherFor came to be.