South Asian Youth Action to honor Amna Nawaz, Beesham Seecharan at 2025 gala

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The New York based community organization South Asian Youth Action (saya.org) announced November 25, that it plans to hold its 2025 Annual Gala on May 10 next year at Pier Sixty.

At the event, two high profile South Asians will be honored – Amna Nawaz, the co-anchor of PBS News Hour, and Beesham A. Seecharan, the COO, general counsel, and client advisor at Matthews South.

The Annual Gala celebrates inspiring individuals who use their influence and resources to drive meaningful change in society, the press release said. SAYA described Nawaz and Seecharan as “exceptional leaders whose work exemplifies the values we hold dear.”

Prior to serving as co-anchor of PBS News Hour in April 2018, Nawaz was an anchor and correspondent at ABC News, anchoring breaking news coverage and leading the network’s livestream coverage of the 2016 presidential election, her biography on PBS says. Before that, she served as foreign correspondent and Islamabad Bureau Chief at NBC News. She is also the founder and former managing editor of NBC’s Asian America platform, built in 2014, to elevate stories from America’s fastest-growing and most diverse population. She also serves as an NBC News and MSNBC contributor. In 2019, Nawaz became the first Asian American and the first Muslim American to moderate a presidential debate.

Nawaz has received four Peabody Awards for News Hour team coverage of some of the biggest stories of our time: in 2024 – reporting from Israel after the Hamas October 7th attack; in 2023 – reporting from Uvalde, Texas after the mass school shooting as part of a gun violence series; in 2021 – reporting from outside the U.S. Capitol during live coverage of the January 6th insurrection; and in 2019 – for an in-depth look at our global plastic pollution problem.

Seecharan joined Matthews South in 2021. Matthews South is an independent advisory + software firm that provides independent, unbiased advice to its clients so that they are the most informed participants in the capital markets.  Before joining Matthews South, Seecharan was a Managing Director & Senior Counsel for Global Markets at Goldman Sachs, according to his bio on Matthews South. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Seecharan covered equity derivatives as a lawyer at JPMorgan Chase.

He started his legal career in the New York and London offices of Davis Polk & Wardwell. In these prior roles, Seecharan has over two decades experience advising, structuring and negotiating equity derivatives and other public and private capital markets transactions and has advised on over $500 billion of transactions for issuers and shareholders globally.

He is the current chair of the Board at Sakhi for South Asian Survivors; He is an Advisory Council Member at the Center for Public Research and Leadership many years; He serves on several non-profit organizations, including on the Board of Directors of SAYA in the past.

A graduate of Stanford University with an A.B. in International Relations and an M.S. in Mathematics, Seecharan received his J.D and Parker School Certificate in International and Comparative Law from Columbia Law School.