The duo had met at graduate school in New York.
By The American Bazaar Staff
NEW YORK: The Tamil actress and model Padmapriya Janakiraman married her long-time boyfriend Jasmine Shah, an IIT Madras and Columbia University alum who is a policy expert on poverty issues based in New Delhi, in Mumbai, on Wednesday. The two had met in New York when they were in graduate school, pursuing degrees at separate institutions.
The traditional Arya Samaj wedding was reportedly kept a secret, with only close family members and friends of the couple, in attendance.
Padmapriya has had a stellar career in films, even as she has effortlessly pursued varied other interests with great success, including bharatnatyam dance, singing, modeling, academics, and working in the financial industry.
She made her acting debut in the Telugu film Seenu Vasanthi Lakshmi (2003), following which she appeared in a number of Malayalam and Tamil-language films alongside leading actors. In a span of five years, she has appeared in nearly 30 films in Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi, and has received several major South Indian awards, including Kerala and Tamil Nadu state awards.
She has essayed memorable roles in the Malayalam films Kaazhcha, Karutha Pakshikal, Pazhassi Raja and the Tamil films Thavamai Thavamirundhu and Mirugam. In the last two years, she has also done roles in critically acclaimed films like Papilio Buddha, and Iyobinte Pustakam, which is her most recent film.
Padmapriya took academics seriously, and along with her films, she pursued an MBA degree in finance at Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies, Harihar. She has worked for GE Capital as a risk consultant in Bangalore and Gurgaon. She also holds a PG Diploma in Environmental Law from National Law School of India University and Masters in Public Administration from New York University.
A fine model too, she won the Miss Andhra Pradesh beauty pageant in 2001.
She met Shah when he was studying at Columbia University. At present he is the Assistant Director-Policy, based in New Delhi, for The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research center at the Economics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Shah had previously worked also with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. He has a Masters of Public Administration, Urban and Social Policy; International Media, Advocacy & Communications. He did his B.Tech. and M. Tech. in mechanical engineering, from IIT Madras.