From the president
Mikayla Tillery is a third-year student double majoring in urban studies and Black studies at Stanford University. She is passionate about advocating for housing justice and climate justice for marginalized people. Mikayla’s experience as a Black woman in a predominately white and rural community in Pennsylvania has had a strong influence on her work. She affects change through civic engagement, policy reform, academic research, and activism.
Personal Statement
From the time I was born as a Black woman in a 97.8% white town in rural Pennsylvania, I was told that social justice was a survival tactic. Through years of housing justice advocacy, electoral organizing, and racial justice activism, my commitment to civic engagement allows me to reclaim agency in spaces I had been denied access to growing up. These experiences influence how I view anti-Blackness in the United States, and I hope to pursue a career that makes material differences for those disadvantaged by housing discrimination, neighborhood segregation, and redlining. I have spent my Stanford career advocating for a transformational redistribution of wealth, power, and educational opportunity to repair the harm done to marginalized people, both on our campus and beyond. I have transitioned over 200 Black first-year students to Stanford through New Student Orientation programming; produced policy memos on tenant protections that influenced the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and other legislators to center frontline, renter communities in the energy transition; and served on the Stanford Board of Trustees to advocate for equitable land use. These experiences teach me that a future where affordable, climate-conscious housing is a human right is within reach.