I’m Mansi (pronounced maan-see).
The script you see at the top of this page is my name in Devanagari.
I chose to begin here, in a language not everyone can read, because it holds something essential about how I move through the world.
If you’re curious, you can read the story behind that choice here.
People often know me through different entry points. Some through handmade tokens for strangers and invisible workers. Some through published essays. Some through gatherings around paint and paper. Some through The RIPPLE Experience™.
But underneath all of it is the same question:
What becomes possible when someone feels seen?
How I Found My Way
I wasn’t always able to work this way. For a long time, creativity was something I had to set aside in order to survive.
I used to watercolor as a child in India. Dreamy landscapes. Family portraits with happy puppies. Things I didn't have. It was my escape — my way of coping with a household that was loud in all the wrong ways. I would paint what I wished was real.
When I was 19, I applied to a design institute. A panel of celebrated creatives flipped through my portfolio and told me I had no originality. That I clearly would never be an artist.
They saw my poetry sitting alongside the watercolors and said: maybe there’s something there.
It stung. It felt true. And it set the direction for the next twenty years of my life.
I packed up my brushes. I pursued writing instead — because that's what they said might have potential.
I moved to the United States, earned a master's in journalism from the University of Iowa and built a career in strategic communications. I wrote for and edited alumni magazines and annual reports. I was the ghostwriter for CEOs. I worked in healthcare, philanthropy, higher education.
It was a comfortable career. I earned well. I had time off. I married a wonderful man. Life was okay in every sense of the word.
But art was no longer a part of my life. The wounds from that rejection were so deep that I just didn't feel courageous enough to open them again. It was easier to shove it all down and pretend like it was never a part of who I was.
Two decades into an accidental career, I became pregnant and quit my job. I wanted to enjoy my pregnancy because I had this feeling that life would change once the baby arrived.
And it did — in ways I didn’t expect.
My daughter had allergies, so severe I couldn’t put her down. We couldn’t go to the park. We couldn’t go to the library. We were practically under house arrest for three years, and I was having an identity crisis.
“Just a mom” wasn’t a title anyone had prepared me for. I was drowning.
One afternoon, as I was cooking, my then-two-and-a-half-year-old spilled some Tempera paint on the floor. And instead of shouting at her, I found myself dipping my fingers in that wet goop. She started giggling.
I dropped more paint, purposefully this time. Our hardwood floor disappearing under the circles of mixed colors.
Mud.
The one thing most of us dread making in art. But it was in that mud-making moment where I forgot I was a mother carrying more than I could hold.
We were just playing. That hole I had been carrying for twenty years felt non-existent.
That’s the day I realized what I needed to do to save myself.
What Emerged
I didn’t plan this path. I just kept showing up. Every day, in my makeshift one-table “studio,” making things with my hands — messy, imperfect, alive.
I started handing out small mixed-media pieces of art as tokens of kindness to grocery clerks, crossing guards, delivery drivers — everyday invisible workers who rarely receive appreciation.
It became a practice before I had a word for it.
Over the years, my daughter and I have handed out thousands of these tokens in our community and in our travels. In August 2025, I set up a Ripple Station™ by my mailbox as an experiment.
It’s a small wooden box where neighbors take a token, add their own words, and pass it on. I replenish it every week.
What began as a personal ritual has slowly, organically become a kindness movement.
The art has done something I couldn’t have planned. It has loosened the grip of that old rejection. And in doing so, it has helped the words come back. This time, the voice is mine.
My personal essays about identity, inherited patterns, what we carry and what we choose are being published in literary journals. I was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2025. I’ve signed a book deal with Schiffer Craft.
The panelists in 1997 didn't end my creative life. They split it in two. It took twenty years of writing in other people’s voices, and a decade of making with my hands, to put it back together.
That wholeness is what I now bring into rooms.
Where I Am Now
Most of us spend our days becoming known for what we do. Employee. Caregiver. Leader. Volunteer. Creator.
My work creates moments where people step outside those roles and remember they're human — and discover that everyone around them is, too.
Creativity is my invitation. Conversation is the heart. Connection is our ripple.
Eventually, I began noticing patterns — not just in my own life, but in every room I sat in. I call this The RIPPLE Practice™.
Today, this work shows up in many forms: The RIPPLE Experience™, the Ripple Station, my writing, and my forthcoming book, Little Tokens, Big Ripples.
The format changes. The intention stays the same.
Working Together
My work moves into rooms — book clubs, organizations, schools, community centers, corporate teams— in the form of The RIPPLE Experience™. We don’t make great art. We simply slow down together for human connection.
If you're ready to bring this to your group, write to me.