If you visited Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt this past summer for a sweet treat, chances are, you might’ve run into senior Bhavya Srinivasan. From organizing karaoke nights to meticulously curating short videos and posts for Menchie’s Instagram, she spent the summer knitting together a community within the store. 

At Menchies, Bhavya undertook the official position of marketing intern. Her affinity to connecting with her surrounding community and instigating deeper bonds drew her into the marketing world, and late into the summer, she organized one of her biggest events at Menchie’s: a karaoke night.

The one stipulation for this karaoke night was the following: Any customer who performed a karaoke song would receive three ounces of free frozen yogurt. 

“I’d been promoting this for a couple weeks beforehand, and then we only had a group of two girls who came just for that because of what they saw on Instagram,” Bhavya said. “They sang and then they left. It was barren and dark. No one came back. That’s what it felt like for 20 minutes.” 

As other customers trickled into the store, unwilling to participate in the karaoke night, Bhavya picked up on their hesitancy to sing, realizing that they felt uncomfortable singing alone. With this understanding in mind, she decided to start offering to duet with customers. 

“We’re in the embarrassment together,” Bhavya said. “I probably dueted with twenty plus people that night. “I figured out the night was actually successful when this guy said, ‘Hey, when’s the next one? Love to come again.’” 

The karaoke night served as a turning point where Bhavya realized that her love for community and performance meshed perfectly with the practice of marketing. 

“I see the point of marketing to build a community and to bring people closer,” Bhavya said. “I call it planned spontaneity. It’s creating these lasting connections and memories and moments for people.” 

Bhavya’s love for forging lasting connections is a quality her friends know her for. Close friend senior Sofie Marino notes the ways in which Bhavya maintained close relationships over the years. 

“When we took chemistry together, we made up this handshake to aluminum, zinc and silver,” Sofie said. “I don’t know why we thought that was so cool, but we did, and we’ve done it every year. Inside jokes like that, that only she and I know, show how she keeps those connections.” 

Bhavya’s desire to lean into her community extends into her pursuits in the arts; as a member of Harker’s musical group Downbeat and routine performer Harker’s annual musicals, her engagement ingrained her as the hilarious, reassuring team member that her peers know her for. Downbeat member senior Shruti Srinivasan attests to these qualities of Bhavya. 

“She’s so welcoming, and is somebody who, throughout the years, I’ve always had such an amazing laugh with,” Shruti said. “We spent so much time during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland being away from home, and it was really nice to have someone who still felt like home.”

Over the years, Bhavya found her niche community to be that between an audience and performers on stage. Her vested efforts in acting and singing have been instrumental in her ability to explore new facets of her identity, from her emotional range to her mindset regarding confidence. 

“We’re in a world where we’re very focused on ourselves and our own successes,” Bhavya said. “ It’s important to be able to stop and consider yourself in different ways. That’s performing: considering yourself in different situations and being able to take that pause and breathe. You’re helping yourself and you’re serving others.”

To connect with audiences, Bhavya approaches acting with a deep level of self-reflection and exploration of her characters. Each character she  played allowed her to discover a new quality about herself. In Harker’s 2025 musical “Guys and Dolls”, she played the role of Ms. Adelaide, and the previous year, she played Linda in the musical “The Wedding Singer”. 

“By playing these different people, I find myself a little bit more,” Bhavya said. “Linda taught me that I have a more daring side to myself. It doesn’t mean leaving my husband at the altar, but I could wear something cute and go out and dance, get out of my comfort zone, be that rocker chick.” 

Through months of journaling and intense rehearsals, Bhavya works to build a character that will leave a truly lasting impression on audiences. Her characters become a second identity for her, so that on stage, she only thinks through the mental lens of her characters. 

“I don’t play a character the same way every single time,” Bhavya said. “That’s not authentic. Just go in and be the character. The more true you are to what you’re doing, the more effective it’s going to be to the audience.”

Director of Performing Arts Laura Lang-Ree, who worked closely with Bhavya through Downbeat and Harker’s musicals, admires Bhavya’s commitment to truly understanding her characters. 

“One of the qualities about Bhavya that I really admire is her fearlessness in creating a character,” Lang-Ree said. “With Linda from ‘The Wedding Singer’, she just kept trying and crafting harder and harder with it and created the most lovable, nasty woman you could imagine on stage.” 

Bhavya’s vivacious, collaborative nature embedded her as a beacon of positivity who effects change in her community. Whether it be through organizing karaoke nights or sabotaging her own weddings onstage, authenticity remains central to the heart of her work. 

“Something about me is I always look into the mirror to find my character, because the mirror and the eyes are the window to the soul,” Bhavya said. “I can be bold like Linda. I know I can sometimes be a little ditzy like Miss Adelaide. I know those versions of myself.”