From the president
Anusha Kumar, a third-year student in Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social policy with majors in social policy and environmental policy and culture as well as a minor in German, is an outstanding environmental leader on campus and in the surrounding community of Evanston, Illinois. Anusha seeks to create consensus by building bridges across social and cultural differences, as she has demonstrated through her work in the campus groups Fossil Free Northwestern and Students Organizing for Labor Rights and through the community-based initiative Participatory Budgeting Evanston, for which she canvassed residents to learn about their needs and then collaborated with them on a successful proposal for a community garden. As a lifelong Illinoisan, Anusha hopes to make her career in environmental law in the state and aspires to further relationships between low-income Black and Brown environmental justice communities across Chicago, alongside rural communities downstate, to advocate for collective, systemic change.
Personal Statement
I am inspired to engage in community-driven organizing and advocacy by local movements and the people behind them. Since arriving in Evanston, I have witnessed the power of a community in cultivating resilience and advancing justice. Through Evanston’s pilot Participatory Budgeting cycle, I authored a $350,000 proposal for an urban farm to address food insecurity in Evanston’s historically redlined 5th Ward. My experiences as a community organizer in Fossil Free Northwestern and Students Organizing for Labor Rights equipped me with the interpersonal skills to conduct community-based research for the proposal and to understand how different systems of oppression overlap, specifically in the Evanston community. This knowledge informs my work as a before-school tutor at a Title I elementary school in Evanston and as a member of Evanston’s Environment Board. I also strive to connect the Northwestern community with civic engagement opportunities in the Chicago-area as a fellow at the Center for Civic Engagement. Through my experiences, I remain committed to the transformation that results from
multi-racial coalitions rooted in solidarity and care. On campus and beyond, I aim to build relationships across movements, while honoring the legacies of the Black, Brown, and Indigenous women who have come before me.