Assam-origin Pulitzer winning journalist, Sanghamitra Kalita, is all set to join the board of directors of The Philadelphia Inquirer from November 15.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, a public benefit corporation, is the largest media network in the Philadelphia region of United States.
“It is a great privilege to join The Inquirer board and help advance its growth through platforms and products that serve many communities,” Kalita said in a statement.
Kalita will replace Susan Goldberg, the top editor of National Geographic, who stepped down from the board recently.
She has been working as senior vice president of CNN Digital since 2016. Kalita previously served as managing editor for editorial strategy at the Los Angeles Times. During her year there, she helped the website (latimes.com) increase traffic to nearly 60 million unique visitors a month.
Prior to that, she was a founding editor of Mint, a business newspaper in New Delhi and has previously worked for Quartz, the Washington Post, Newsday, and the Associated Press. Kalita also launched Epicenter-NYC, a newsletter to help New Yorkers get through the pandemic.
The 43-year-old journalist has also written two books related to migration and globalization, including Suburban Sahibs, and speaks seven languages.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Kalita was raised in Long Island, Puerto Rico, and New Jersey — and regularly travelled to her grandparents’ villages in Assam.
Born to Mahesh Kalita and Nirmala Kalita – her mother was brought up in the Santipur area of Guwahati – her paternal family had settled down in Sadiya in upper Assam.
In fact, Sadiya was a place her family visited every few years — till she became 12-year-old, by when most of her family had already moved to Guwahati.
Fluent in Assamese apart from Spanish and other languages Kalita once recalled: “I really enjoyed my childhood days and especially liked the long trips to Assam. I had once stayed in Sadiya for more than a month and it was truly a revelation for me. I still remember the feel of those times, how it felt to live amidst the lush countryside and to help my cousins with their homework on slates with chalk.”
