Amita Jyoti Hanagud Kaneria

Amita Jyoti Hanagud Kaneria (born Amita Jyoti Hanagud and called Jyoti by her friends and family) was born in Atlanta, GA on January 14th, 1976 to Lynne Johnson Hanagud of Phillipsburg, MT and Sathyanarayana V. Hanagud of Bangalore, India, the youngest of three daughters.

Jyoti loved being in nature, especially going on walks with her dog Auggie along the river, relaxing in the hammock at our family cabin on Georgetown Lake in Montana, going on beach trips to Destin, Florida every fall with her husband, children and mother, sister and brother-in-law. Jyoti loved connecting and being with family and friends, talking, reading, playing games, learning languages, traveling around the world, dancing, poetry, music, art, and gardening. Jyoti made everyone she befriended feel special and heard; this was her superpower. And once a friend, always a friend. She collected friends over the years from every stage of her life’s journey with whom she has created a community of sisters and brothers all over the world.

The photograph above, taken on a recent Halloween before her cancer diagnosis, captures the true essence of Jyoti: her beauty, her radiance, her mischievousness, her groundedness and her zeal for life. She is fun, silly, playful, creative, dramatic, regal, lovely, kind, and vivacious. This is the Amita Jyoti Hanagud Kaneria we all love and remember.

Jyoti graduated from Lakeside High School in Atlanta, GA and then pursued her undergraduate degree in Anthropology, Sociology and Spanish at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. It was at Guilford that Jyoti cultivated her spirit of community service and discovered her love of language which set the tone and the trajectory for her career and life’s work. She became fluent in Spanish by immersion in the language at the Centro de Estudios para Extranjeros (Exchange Student Program) at the University of Guadalajara in Guadalajara, Jalisca, Mexico. Jyoti developed lifelong friendships here and started to understand herself and her multiracial ethnicity through a greater cultural lens and as a global citizen.

After Guilford College, Jyoti spent many fun years in sunny San Diego, CA with dear friends from Guilford college who decided to move across the country to experience the west coast. There she did advocacy work for Casa Cornelia Law Center a non-profit public interest law firm that provides representation and ensures justice and human rights for vulnerable communities where she translated for unaccompanied children.

And for fun, she volunteered at the World Beat Center, a vibrant non-profit cultural organization there, dedicated to promoting Indigenous cultures through music, art, dance, education, and sustainable living. This environment fostered her love of dance, music, art, poetry and writing.

Jyoti loved the expression of dance and movement of all kinds; she was a lifelong student of many dance forms including salsa, flemeco, African dance, and Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance from South India. Some of Jyoti’s best memories include dancing with her friends to Latin music, wherever, whenever, preferably at a club in Mexico.

Jyoti moved back to Atlanta, to further her education, taking advantage of in-state tuition and the support of family nearby, getting a Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics and teaching English as a second language. During this period of her life, she became an Aunt for the first time; she loved doting on her niece, enjoying this special role and the training it gave her when she became a parent.

Her love of the arts, her advocacy work and desire to support the South Asian community facilitated Jyoti meeting Rishi Kaneria in Atlanta when they both performed at a Raksha event where Jyoti read a “Spoken Word” poem and Rishi sang an original song. According to Rishi, it was love at first sight. They married on June 16th, 2007 in Atlanta, GA at the Emory Conference Center. In marrying Rishi, Jyoti was embraced by and instantly became part of a much larger, incredibly supportive and loving Indian family. Jyoti and Rishi welcomed their daughter Anjali into the world on June 27th, 2009 and their daughter Nalini into their family on September 9th, 2012. Becoming a parent was the highlight of her life, her most meaningful and important accomplishment and life’s work in a life full of many accomplishments. Her dedication to and her love for her children and their well being has been Jyoti’s most rewarding and meaningful work in her life.

After her daughters started school, Jyoti decided to further her education and pursue her doctorate degree in education (Teaching/Learning of Language and Literacy in Middle/Secondary Education) which was a labor of love and a balancing act, requiring perseverance, grit and necessary team work and support from Rishi and her family to help Jyoti accomplish this goal. She fulfilled this dream in May of 2022, becoming Dr. Jyoti Kaneria, when she graduated from Georgia State University doctoral program. This acheivement and her subsequent work as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Georgia Tech allowed Jyoti to combine so many of her life’s passions including language, cultural inclusion, advocacy work, education, research, helping others and travel. As promised by her students, her colleagues and her fellow classmates in her PhD program, all of whom respect, honor and love Jyoti and her life’s work, this meaningful work will continue to impact and touch many more lives in the future.

After a year of treatment for breast cancer, from which she was briefly in remission, she quickly succumbed to a recurrence of the cancer that did not respond to treatment. So just like that, within weeks, our beautiful, amazing, loving, one of a kind Jyoti was taken from us on the Winter Solstice, December 21st, 2025, much too soon and much too quickly. Thankfully, she transitioned peacefully and comfortably, surrounded by love and loved ones. And in her last weeks, even as she was not able to participate in the conversation, with the stream of friends and family who flocked from all over the country and world to say “Goodbye,” she continued to connect people and bring us all together, reminiscing about so many wonderful moments over the years with this beautiful soul. So many lovely memories, reflections and conversations about fun times, her life’s work and how to keep her work going, reminding us all that the most important achievement in her life was to love and be loved. And she accomplished this in spades!

Jyoti is preceded in death by her paternal grandparents Hanagud S. Venkatarmiah and Salagame Kamalamma, her maternal grandparents Donald Snow Johnson and Yvonne Henderson Johnson, her mother Lynne Johnson Hanagud, her cousin Jeanne Jackson and her father-in-law Prafulchandra Patel.

Jyoti is survived by her husband Rishi Kaneria of Smyrna, GA, their daughters, Anjali Kaneria, 16, and Nalini Kaneria, 13 of Smyrna, GA, her father, Dr. Sathya V. Hanagud of Atlanta, GA, her sister Dr. Shaanta Hanagud of Atlanta, GA, her sister Leila Hanagud Rankin of Longmont, CO, her mother-in-law Dr. Manju Patel of Kenesaw, GA, her sister-in-law Mira Chari of Marietta, GA, her brother-in-law Josh Chari or Marietta, GA, her niece Kyra Hanagud of Atlanta, GA, her nephews Dillon Rankin of Longmont, CO, Cullen Rankin of Longmont, CO and Zev Chari of Marietta, GA, her uncle Prasad Hanagud and aunt Dr. Cindy Hanagud of Salisbury, MD, her uncle Edwin Johnson of Anaconda, MT, her aunt Kaye Johnson of Salt Lake City, UT, cousin Dr. Sarah Johnson of Takoma, WA, cousin Aaraon Johnson of Missoula, MT, cousins Arun, Rani and Neha Srinivasa of Alpharetta, GA and Vunya Srinivasa of Charlotte, NC. She is survived by many other aunts, uncles, cousins and second cousins both biologically and by marriage throughout the United States, England and India.

Funeral Service is scheduled for Tuesday December 23rd, 2025 at 11:00 AM ET at Wages and Sons Funeral Home in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

In lieu of flowers, donations are being accepted for the “Kaneria El Mundo Initiative” which has been created in loving memory of Dr. Amita Jyoti Kaneria, a scholar, an educator, a mother, a partner, a sister and a friend.

This initiative reflects Dr. Kaneria’s work with Latinx communities in and beyond Atlanta. Inspired by Gloria Anzaldua, a Chicana feminist, and Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Jyoti has been building a bridge for those who live in “nepantla,” an Aztec word meaning “in the middle” or “in-betweenness,” so they can connect across borders, cultures, identities and other divides, for self and collective transformation.

Though her physical body has passed from this world, Amita Jyoti, whose name means “Infinite Light” will continue to illuminate and radiate to all of us through her research and work, her life, her love, her passion to help others and the myriad of lives she has touched. We will continue to honor her by carrying this torch inspired by and lit by her eternal flame.

As her work centered on providing a safe and dialogic space for study abroad programs, especially Latinx students, this initiative emerges from that commitment and has a threefold purpose. First, it will provide fellowships to support Latinx students with their study abroad fees after they have exhausted resources in their own institutions. Second, it will provide workshops for Latinx students to support their wellbeing, language access, and career readiness. Third, it will build connections with local colleges and universities to create bridges for students and faculty to engage in community-based work and study abroad initiatives.

If you are interested in making a donation in honor of Jyoti and her life’s work, please contact Ethan Trinh PhD at (678) 697-9834 or visit the website DrTrinhFoundation.org.