A podcast with Poonam Agrawal

Roots to Fly, Wings to Belong.

Conversations that connect. Values that stay.

Honest, unhurried conversations for parents raising Indian-origin children outside India — about identity, culture, health, tradition, and the quiet weight of being the one who has to carry it forward.

Raising NRI Kids — a microphone growing leaves, grounded by roots

You know this feeling.

Not too tired to care — just tired of pretending the balancing act is easy.

One guest. One real conversation. Every episode.

Founders, artists, physicians, teachers, and parents who have spent years — sometimes decades — wrestling with the same tension you feel every day.

🌱

Identity & Culture

How do you hold onto something essential from where you came from, while raising a child fully in the world you live in now? No platitudes — real answers from people who've lived it.

💪

Grit & Resilience

How families engineer drive and resilience in an environment of modern comfort — raising kids with world-class ambition and an iron-clad sense of who they are.

🪔

Tradition & Wellbeing

Language, food, festivals, stories, health — the small, hard things our parents did by instinct, and how to pass them on intentionally, without burning out.

"Every guest gets asked, in some form, the same real question: what did this cost you, and was it worth it? Because that's usually where the truth actually lives."
— POONAM AGRAWAL, HOST
Poonam Agrawal, host of Raising NRI Kids

Meet your host

I'm Poonam — a mother, a working professional in tech, and most days a person figuring this out one conversation at a time, just like you. I'm raising a toddler in Dallas, thousands of miles from the home I grew up in.

I don't have all the answers. I have a full-time job, a toddler, and a list of questions I couldn't stop asking people who've walked further down this road than I have. So I started recording the conversations instead of having them alone in my head.

I'm not an expert. I'm just someone who kept asking better people the questions I couldn't answer myself — and decided to share what I learned.

Read the full story

Listen & Subscribe

Watch and subscribe on YouTube today — Spotify and Apple Podcasts are coming soon.

▶️ YouTube 🎵 Spotify SOON 🎧 Apple Podcasts SOON

The conversation continues off-mic

Follow along for clips, guest announcements, and the small everyday wins of raising rooted kids.

Help shape the show.

Tell me the topic you wish someone would talk about honestly — or, if you've lived this journey yourself, come tell your story on the podcast.