About Us

Our three founding staff members have over 40 years of collective experience living and working alongside Hindu communities, both in India and in North America, as students of Hindu culture and as social entrepreneurs. We also have over 20 years of collective experience facilitating cultural learning programs for North Americans traveling to India for educational or business opportunities and those with Hindu neighbors or coworkers in North America. Over the years, we have become well-networked with many other cultural learning facilitators with diverse experience in various places around the world. A few of these have become our mentors and many of these have become our curriculum development consultants and community liaisons.

The vision that became Pranām Collaborative Learning Services started with a growing sensitivity to cultural and communal tensions between people from North American Christian communities and people from Hindu communities. It took several years to identify the best resources available for understanding and preventing these tensions and then to integrate them into our own lives and into the cultural learning programs we facilitated. In those earlier years, our focus was on content, but we eventually came to the conviction that delivering content does not make learning happen, no matter how good the content is. We began educating ourselves in adult learning methodology.

It was a defining paradigm shift for us when we realized that life transforming learning is always collaborative, meaning actively working together with others to take new information, new ideas, and new skills and integrate them with what we already know or use them to reorganize what we thought we knew. The science of collaborative learning confirmed and enlightened many of the convictions we had come to through our own observations over the years. Collaborative learning requires authentic relationships built on mutual appreciation and a willingness to engage in critical self-reflection. Every person from every culture has valuable insights and experiences to share. We each have much to humbly learn from the other.

The story of Pranām Collaborative Learning Services is the story of how collaborative learning has come to define our lives and our relationships with the diverse people and communities around us. We would love to invite you into that story.

Weaving together decades of experience

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Weaving together decades of experience

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Weaving together decades of experience • Weaving together decades of experience •

Our Values

We Value Authenticity

Authentic relationships between religio-cultural communities can only take place in a safe environment of holistic dialogue that is free from institutional agendas, communal bias, and unhealthy financial incentives. Authenticity is about being yourself while encouraging others to be themselves. Authenticity is about humbly speaking for yourself and allowing others to speak for themselves. Authenticity allows people to learn from each other even when their perspectives challenge each other’s deeply rooted assumptions.

We Value Transparency

Authenticity requires transparency. Relationships between religio-cultural communities cannot be authentic when someone is hiding major aspects of their life, like what they do for a living, what groups they belong to, or what causes they are working for in the world.

We Value Consistency

Authenticity also requires consistency. Relationships between religio-cultural communities cannot be authentic if the way we talk with the other is different than the way we talk when we think the other won’t hear. Authentic relationships require us to talk about ourselves and each other the same way within our origin community, within our host community, and within our own self-perception.

We Value Hindu Civilization

Hindu Civilization is one of the oldest living civilizations on earth. The ancient and rich cultural heritage of Hindu Civilization is a source of profound beauty and insight that is appreciated around the world through its vast diversity of literature, stories, songs, philosophies, sensory symbolism, sciences, arts, and foods. Hindu Civilization is unmatched in its diversity and complexity and cannot be fully represented by any single Hindu community or religious system. There is so much we all can learn from Hindu Civilization no matter what religio-cultural community we come from, if we can set aside our own deeply rooted cultural assumptions and let each aspect of Hindu Civilization speak for itself.

No matter what a person believes about Jesus, he remains one of the most significant figures in world history. The teachings and life example of Jesus have had an irrepressible and challenging influence throughout the development of Western civilizations, and yet Jesus himself was part of an Eastern civilization. Jesus stands independent of what any Christian community thinks of him or what any other religio-cultural community thinks of him. What matters is how he himself lived and acted and taught. The teachings and life example of Jesus offer valuable insights that are equally compelling and challenging for anyone from any religio-cultural community, if we can set aside our own deeply rooted cultural assumptions and let the teachings and life example of Jesus speak for themselves.

We Value the Teachings and Life Example of Jesus

Our Directors

Montana | Executive Director

Montana lives in the Chicago area with his wife, Sarah, and their five kids. He has an MBA in International Economic Development from Eastern University. He has lived and worked alongside Hindu communities since 2000, including 7 years in India, first as a student of Hindu culture in college, then as a relief and development volunteer after the earthquake in Gujarat and after the tsunami in Tamil Nadu, and finally as a business entrepreneur.

Montana is a voracious reader of cultural history, historical-critical analysis, scientific discoveries, psychology, and fantasy novels. He enjoys camping and biking with his family and working with his hands to make things and fix things. He loves exploring the transformative power of collaborative learning in every area of life: in work meetings, within his own family and community, and in informal get-togethers with other colleagues and friends.

Montana and his family express their devotion to the teachings and example of Jesus using traditional cultural forms and liturgical styles they have continued to learn from Hindu communities.

Suzy | Administrative Director

Suzy lives in Houston with her husband, James. She got her first taste of Hindu community in 2009 when she spent 18 months in India after graduating from Texas A&M University. She later spent several years in Uttar Pradesh coordinating cross-cultural internships for North American college students traveling to India.

Suzy is a rare and wonderful mix of relational and administrative. She is a vivacious communicator whose desire to connect in meaningful ways extends far beyond cultural limitations. She is a committed learner who finds delight in shared meaning and understanding. Suzy has a passion for helping people discover who Lord Jesus created them to be, so they can make a meaningful impact in their communities. She enjoys getting to know people and spending time playing board games with friends and family. Suzy also loves developing efficient, organized systems that she believes better the lives of her husband, coworkers, and friends. Her heart to help and to clearly communicate makes her an amazing team player.

Isaac | Marketing Director

Isaac lives in Reading, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Lauren, and their daughter. He holds degrees in Intercultural Studies and Theology and is a certified StoryBrand Guide. As Marketing Director for Pranām, Isaac leads thoughtful marketing strategies that highlight the unique, learner-centered design of Pranām’s cohorts. He applies his expertise across branding, digital engagement, and event coordination - helping forge meaningful connections between Christian and Hindu communities.

Isaac also serves as Engagement Architect at Rubico, a custom software development company based in India. Through his work with Rubico’s cross-cultural teams, he has grown in his understanding of collaboration across continents, cultures, and communication styles. His passion for cross-cultural learning was first sparked during his family’s time living in India, where he experienced the power of humility, hospitality, and spiritual friendship among Hindu communities.

Outside of work, Isaac enjoys good espresso, long conversations, and hunting for hidden gems while thrifting. Whether hosting story-driven workshops, walking with friends, or crafting marketing content, Isaac is passionate about the transformative power of authenticity, clarity, and shared learning.