Advocate
Highlights from the advocacy side of my life.
Supporting Ukraine
"When Far Away is Close to Home"
I was honored to work with Ukrainian student at the University of Maryland to support the forming of the Ukrainian Student Association and to help the group put together the community panel, "When Far Away is Close to Home" last spring.
Student Advocates for Graduate Education (SAGE)
From 2018-2022 I served on SAGE including in the elected executive role, Communications Chair. During my tenure, I co-authored a white paper presented at the annual Days on the Hill which highlighted the needs for stable research funding for graduate students especially in light of the pandemic. In addition, I supported work by SAGE to support international students, mental health, shared governance and affordability.
Transportation Access
with Graduate Student Government
It is hard to pick a highlight from my years serving in the University of Maryland Graduate Student Government. I had the honor of serving as the Vice President for Financial Affairs and Student Fee Matters and for a full 2 year term as President. During my time, we worked on a plethora of advocacy projects focused on representing the needs and sharing the excellence of our 10,500+ constituents. One such project was helping graduate students who had their safe transportation pulled away without notice in the fall of 2019. Through working with the city, the police and university administrators, we were able to come up with solutions for these students to safely get to and from the university from their apartments.
Civic Engagement
USMSC
As the elected president for the University System of Maryland Student Council from 2020-2021, I represented over 172,000 university students from across the state of Maryland. Given the timing, civic engagement was a top priority and we had many success stories advocating for support to help students be civically engaged as voters, election judges and advocating at the Maryland General Assembly for the Student and Military Voter Empowerment Act. All of this during a pandemic!
