When the time came to decide on colleges, Rudrasksha (Rudy) Bhukhanwala ’26 had a choice to make—accept an offer from Georgia Institute of Technology (just 25 minutes from his family’s home in Atlanta) or embark on a completely new adventure at NYU Shanghai.
Picking up and moving to a new country wasn’t new for Rudy. Born in Ahmedabad, India, he spent his early school years living in Mumbai before moving to the US for high school. He was an ambitious teenager, crazy for playing cricket, dreaming of starting a travel company, publishing a book of short stories, and becoming passionate about filmmaking. But his favorite memories? Hanging out in the broadcast room as a high school news anchor. Even then, he knew he wanted to continue that in college.
Rudy stepped onto campus excited to build a community around broadcasting that didn’t exist at the time.
He built the club from scratch: “I just recruited anybody I met in the first couple of weeks,” he says. After he pitched the idea for a broadcasting club to his first-year roommates from China and new friends he made, NYUSH NOW was born. The infectiously wacky Instagram account featured weekly videos full of skits and student interviews, all while keeping students up to date on campus events.
Rudy says his motivation for making NYUSH NOW wasn’t just an attempt to create viral content. He had deeper goals: Fostering community while having fun.
It was refreshing, he says, how NYU Shanghai students, who hail from all over the globe, could unite over common interests. “It broke through those implicit biases you have about places like Asia, Africa, and the US,” he says.
Over the past four years, the club has grown. In fact, some of its current members say they were drawn to NYU Shanghai after finding NYUSH NOW content online. The club, he says, attracts a diverse group of students from all classes and has become a space for students to truly be themselves. “I know it sounds corny, but I feel as if creating this judge-free, inclusive community is one of our biggest accomplishments,” he says.
And while he’s recognizable around campus as the lead anchor of NYUSH NOW, the Business and Finance major and Chinese minor has poured the same amount of energy in his academic career—motivated less by grades and more by a desire to find meaningful ways to leave a positive impact.
Choosing to major in Business and Finance was about building a strong foundation for any career path, and through it, Rudy became excited about social entrepreneurship. Instead of “either non-profit or business, this felt like a middle ground which I could wrap my head around,” he says.
While studying away at NYU in New York City during his junior year, Rudy was inspired by his courses, including Fundamentals to Social Entrepreneurship, taught by Adjunct Associate Professor of Public Service Dan Porter. In the class, he began working on the prototype for a financial literacy board game that he’s currently turning into an app as part of an Interactive Media Arts class this semester.
The game, Millionaire, will be exhibited at the 2026 Spring Interactive Media Arts End-of-Semester Show, and Rudy says he hopes to introduce it to middle school students to help them learn more about managing money.
Another course, Real Business Cases, taught by NYU Shanghai Visiting Professor of Global China Studies and Business Lola Woetzel, gave him hands-on experience putting his business knowledge to practice. As part of the class, he gained eye-opening experience consulting companies like the Chinese solar company LONGi Solar on their global expansion efforts.
Multiple internships—in insurance sales, consulting, private equity, and wealth management— forced Rudy to grow in new areas and helped him sharpen his presentation skills, become more brave, and develop a thick skin. But these experiences also helped Rudy clarify his values. in the summer of his junior year—despite receiving offers for jobs in wealth management sales—something inside him clicked.
“I felt I wasn't making the best use of my skills,” he recalled. “I just felt as if I was wasting my hours on the phone, trying to sell (finance packages) rather than educating.”
Listening to his instincts, he realized that teaching and mentoring were perhaps his calling. When he began volunteering as a literacy tutor at a non-profit in New York, his goals became even clearer and inspired Rudy to make teaching his career. “Going through that, it was really fun, and I actually would really look forward to those meetings every week,” he recalls. “This made me feel like this is what I should be doing.”
Back in Shanghai, he found ways to hone his skills by creating a syllabus and teaching consulting classes through the student business club TAMID. “It was fulfilling, and I ended up forming a mentor-mentee bond with a lot of kids who still ask me questions about life,” he says. “It’s very rewarding.”
Now, as his university career comes to a close, Rudy says he’s gained a new outlook. “Four years have flown by,” he says. “I feel as if I’ve become more open and my priorities, in terms of what I want to do afterwards, have changed.”
Whereas he had felt pressure to choose a path—investment banking, private equity, consulting, asset management, wealth management—Rudy says he ended up feeling like an imposter during job interviews. Once he was brave enough to step out of those boxes, he says, he immediately felt he was on the right path.
This summer, Rudy will head back to New York to start a job as a teacher with Teach for America, a non-profit organization and national service program. He’ll be teaching eighth-grade algebra at Dream Highbridge Middle School, right by Yankee Stadium, and maybe even coach the school soccer team—all while getting his graduate degree in Education at Hunter College. “Isn’t that so much better than financial sales?” Rudy laughs, the answer clearly apparent to him. Later on, he hopes to pursue a PhD and become a professor.
Rudy’s time at NYU Shanghai prepared him for this next step, he says—from coming to China not knowing a word of Chinese, becoming comfortable moving between cultures, and realizing that life extends beyond one’s career path. “If I do something for a majority of my awake life, I want to like it,” he says.
His parting advice to students who are just starting out at NYU Shanghai? Take the time to travel around China. Be honest with yourself, especially with what you want to pursue. And finally: be shameless.
“Nobody is watching. If you’re shameless, you get the best memories,” he says. “If you go into C-Store and you’re dancing…people have a three-second memory. They’re going to be like, ‘Oh, that kid was dancing,’ and then, focus on the next customer. So just dance.”