The Three Musketeers, Touro Style
Graduate School of Technology students show it's not where you come from that matters
They were the troika of Touro’s Graduate School of Technology, three young women from completely different backgrounds, inseparable and unconquerable. Their professors and deans were quite taken with Paula Inestroza, Shirin Charaniya and Chaya Klugmann: They were top students, who studied hard and shone academically. “With Shirin and Chaya it never felt like we were working,” says Inestroza, who now teaches technology to public elementary school children in Brooklyn. “It was like we were just hanging out.”
It’s not surprising they stood out: They looked like a Benetton ad for diversity. “I don’t think we ever spoke of it,” says Charaniya, who works as an Instructional Technologist for a leading video streaming company. “We just hit it off. We’re all from cultures that teach the importance of learning and that’s Touro’s environment, as well.”
The only time their backgrounds came up, says Klugmann was over the issue of food. “They are very accommodating,” she says, laughing. “There are about four kosher coffee shops that work for me and they’re fine with that.” On a more serious note, adds Klugmann, who teaches at a Yeshiva school in Washington Heights, “I had a very specific vision of what I wanted out of the school. So did Paula and so did Shirin. And we all walked out with what we needed.”
