My Story

The Story of Brown Girl Surf TM

My mother as a young woman in pre-partition India.

My family came to America from South Asia nearly 40 years ago. My mother was the first woman in our family to graduate high school. She wore a traditional head covering growing up and was arranged to marry someone at the age of 15. Her path was very much predetermined for her. She had little opportunity as a woman growing up in an eastern culture at that time. After skirting an arranged marriage and immigrating to the U.S., she found a way to re-invent herself. In doing so, she was one of the first women in our family to break conventional barriers imposed on women. However, she still held on to her traditions and values as a woman raised in the East. She and my father, whom she married from her own choosing, settled on the New Jersey Shore. Though I grew up 5 minutes from the ocean, girls just didn't surf. There were no places to really learn unless you happened to be born into a surfing family. I was, however, raised in a family that valued the ocean and valued supporting girls in pursuit of their passions. One of my fondest childhood memories was fishing on my dad's boat and playing at the beach. I still remember the day I caught two flukes on my fishing line. I could barely reel them out of the water but I'll never forget the feeling of wonder at seeing my catch and the waves of congratulations from all the fellow fishermen.

I grew up on the Jersey Shore...always loved to play on the beach.

I was fortunate to have a girlhood full of opportunities to go after my dreams unlike many women in my family and many girls around the world today. I loved sports and started playing soccer when I was 6 and took up martial arts at age 11. At 15, I became the first South Asian girl member of the U.S. National Karate Team. It was an amazing experience. I realized early on that my upbringing and opportunities were in stark contrast to what most girls face around the world. This contrast was most evident in a trip I made to Bangladesh, my father's native country, in my youth. I saw a girl who couldn't be more than 13, with a baby, forced to beg on the street to make a living. I started volunteering in my teens at a transitional housing site for women and children in my community and saw similar issues here in America – a sad loss of opportunities and hope for young girls who missed out on their girlhoods and were forced to grow up too fast.

At 18 I left home to go to college in Boston. There I was exposed to the music and dance of North India and really connected with parts of my rich culture that started to shape me as a young adult. I also had the opportunity

to study in South Africa one year. I couldn't get into a Zulu class that semester so my friend convinced me to take a gender studies class. I remember our readings on the Bosnian war and the use of rape as a tool to promote genocide. It was almost unbelievable. The exposure to these issues further proved to me how much work there was needed in the world to create paths for women and girls' empowerment on social, economic and political levels. By 22, I was inspired by the classical arts of India and had also built up a desire to somehow level the playing field for women. I ended up moving to California to pursue my love of classical Indian dance and music with the world renowned Indian artist Pandit Chitresh Das. I also began a year of volunteer work supporting low-income women in starting their own businesses and realizing their dreams.

Empowering immigrant and refugee women entrepreneurs.

Amidst the dance and music classes and performances, at 24, my passion to make a difference led me to start a non-profit called C.E.O. Women. The organization was dedicated to helping low-income immigrant and refugee women to fulfill their dreams of becoming entrepreneurs. I started the organization with just $1,000 and grew it to national acclaim. I worked very hard the first few years, running operations out of my bedroom for 3 years before the organization really took off. I loved the idea of helping other women pursue their dreams and it was extremely hard work. I spent the first 7 years constantly working weekends, holidays, evenings, fundraising and delivering programs. As time went on, I danced less and worked all the time to keep things going. The work of the organization was amazing and it took a lot out of me. In my initial years in California, I met a good friend who surfed and would always hear him talk about it. I had always wanted to learn. So, at 26 I took my first surf lesson on a trip to Maui, becoming the first woman in my family to really ever attempt a board sport. I remember my father as a reluctant bystander wondering why his daughter was

trying surfing at this age when he thought I should probably be getting married and settling down. To me, it was another path yet to be explored and paved and I was excited to have an opportunity to try it.

I'm usually a very good beginner at things, but as the first lesson proved, I was horrible! I felt a little intimidated learning a new sport in which most of the participants were men. I remember my dad giving me a lecture after seeing me struggle to paddle and barely get up on the board. He basically said that surfing was not for me, and that I had to be much more "acrobatic" in order to do it. I think he was also convinced it was a sport for young, short boys only given that the man showing me couldn't have been more than 5'2". Even with my years of martial arts and dance training, it was the hardest sport I ever had to learn. I tried a few more lessons over the years but was left feeling pretty discouraged.

A few years later, I happened to see a program on TV about a women's surf camp. I remember thinking to myself that this was the opportunity I had been waiting for to really try my hand at surfing without having to worry about looking like an ass in front of other male surfers. "THAT is what I am going to do!" I remarked to my mom. So at 30, I took off to Costa Rica for 3 weeks in hopes that I would learn to surf (again). I was still horrible at surfing and afraid of the ocean. I paddled out on my second day. A huge wave came and broke on me

Learning to surf.

and dragged me halfway to shore. My board hit me over the head and left me with a huge bump. I became terrified of the power of the ocean for those weeks but when I came home, something in me could not live without being in it. So I started braving the cold Northern Californian waters and was soon paddling out and catching waves on my own. Before I knew it, I started traveling around the world in search of waves. Something felt so empowering being able to maneuver through the ocean, catch a wave and ride it.

In the Fall of 2010, I was suffering from pelvic pain. The doctors ordered an ultrasound and found in me a complex cyst. It definitely scared me as I had lost 3 friends to cancer in the past few years, including a fellow dancer. It was also a bit of a wake up call. When I first got the ultrasound report, my immediate reaction was "If I have something like cancer, I need to get in as much surfing as possible now, in case I don't make it." That thought alone made me realize how much I equated surfing with living, and living in the moment, and how happy it made me. It also showed me how important it was to me in my life. We monitored the cyst for a few months and I was diagnosed with a disease that I can manage to live with and that is, luckily, not life threatening.

The late Jaiwanti Das Pamnani, a fellow professional dancer who dedicated her life to Indian art, lost her battle with liver cancer.She danced all the way up until she passed. Photo: Chitresh Das Dance Company

Surfing Fiji

While managing my health issues, I also found myself having to nurse the financial health of the non-profit I founded. We were really being hit hard with the economy. After 11 years of hard work we were struggling to keep the organization running on a shoestring. In the span of one month, we were denied two grants which sent us into a financial crisis. Soon after the leadership and board voted to shut the organization down. I felt terribly sad about the loss to the community. I also felt like a fish out of water. That was the only career I had known my whole adult life and I had invested so much blood, sweat and tears into it. I had no plan for what to do next. The only things I had were $8,000 in savings, a passion for surfing and a desire

to continue making a difference in the world. Though it was so tough to see 11 years of hard work go down the drain, I tried to figure out ways I could still continue my work empowering women and girls, but in a different and smarter way. I thought to myself that life is too short, and you're never too old to reinvent yourself, so I did just that – in the true spirit of an entrepreneur I saw the transition as an opportunity and began to reinvent myself and my career. My mom retired around that time. She was finally able to pursue her love of sports by becoming a competitive golfer which further inspired me to see what could be possible with surfing. I figured if she can do that over 60, why can't I make a change as well?

Yep -- that's mom!

I started sharing these amazing stories of girls from around the world with my good surfer friend, Jackie, who spent her whole adult career in the for-profit sector running a teen focused website. Something about these women's stories really drew us in. We began focusing on how we could locate and support these trailblazing women and girls as change agents and bring their stories to the world.

I was excited about a career in surfing, but of course, like most surfers, wondered how to make a living that would support me to pursue my passion. I had a desire to get back to my childhood roots and pursue the sport competitively, but had a LONG way to go. I started training with a coach down in Santa Cruz. I was also interested in exploring some of the intersection of movement between classical Indian dance and longboarding. I knew no matter what path I chose, surfing would be a central part of it. One evening, my coach sent me something fascinating. It was an article about the first female surfer in India. I was struck that women all the way across the world were getting into the sport. It took me 10 years to get to where I was at in surfing, and yet here was this renegade woman doing it in India, a country with limited surf infrastructure and resources. I wondered how did she do it? How did she get her family's acceptance? Does she compete? Is she encouraging other women and girls to partake? I then started to notice that women and girls in the most unlikely places were starting to surf or be the first to pursue an ocean loving sport - in Bangladesh, in India and even amongst the war zone of the Gaza strip.

Rawand is one of the four girls learning to surf on the Gaza Strip.

Dr. Wallace 'J.' Nichols

I decided to focus our initial search to find the first female surfers in my area of ancestry – South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka), one of the least documented and unlikely places to find girl surfers. We decided to name the project Brown Girl Surf TM . We felt the name not only honored the first female surfers (who were brown girls from Polynesia and very possibly the Seychelles) but it also honored trailblazing women and girls who were making waves of change in their communities.

Brown Girl Surf TM is our platform to bring stories and projects of trailblazing female surfers from around the world to you. We hope our platform can serve to share your thoughts and ideas and foster connection and support of our surfing friends and sisters who are committed to making social, economic, environmental and political changes in their communities.

We talked about the concept to a few people, including ocean-activist Dr. Wallace 'J.' Nichols, a Research Associate at California Academy of Sciences and Dr. Krista Comer of Rice University. We were surprised that they too were intrigued with the idea and saw the project as a way to collaborate with us in their own research. J. was particularly interested in studying the affects of the ocean on the brain for a new field of exploration called neuroconservation. He was already collaborating with the neuroscience community. Through our efforts he hoped to gain valuable research into the neural patterns and behaviors of these remarkable young women on the edge. Krista had just published one of the single most important studies on women's surfing, 'Surfer Girls in the New World Order.' We approached Krista to see if she would venture to explore, with us, new girl localisms popping up around the world. We agreed to find the stories and bring them to the world, and she agreed to provide critical commentary and insights into what we found along the way to give further weight and meaning to our search. Such are the stragglers we have picked up on our journey thus far! Not too shabby, eh?

Dr. Krista Comer

Recognizing the importance of building local economies, and offering opportunities to as many women as we can in the process, we are also incorporating local, C.E.O. Women graduate entrepreneurs into our project as well. Our first product is a line of Brown Girl Surf TM T-shirts, which were designed by Wen Fei Hsu, an immigrant woman artist from Taiwan and one of the first graduates ever of C.E.O. Women. Every T-shirt sold helps to create waves of change by funding our journeys to find these trailblazing women and girls and supporting them as changemakers in their communities.