“As a school board member, I have been very successful in increasing the awareness around what it means to be a diverse community and being inclusive in that diversity.”

I was pre-med pretty much my entire life, until college. In early 2016, what really pushed me to get involved was when Donald Trump was running for president. He said there were thousands of Muslims celebrating in my hometown, Jersey City, New Jersey, after 9/11. Not only is that completely false, but it's something that perpetuates this Islamophobic narrative. Our community really suffers from that, so it really made me think ‘I have to do something about this.’ In Jersey City, we have a pretty large Muslim population and we've never had a Muslim elected official, until I ran for office and ultimately was successful in 2017. 

I'm an elected school board member on the Jersey City Board of Education and this is my first year at Harvard Law School. I have an interest in pursuing a career in either criminal justice reform or general public interest. When I think about the disparities between the rich and the poor, I wonder how we can use the law to be a vehicle to mitigate the circumstances in this country that are making it tougher for economic and social mobility. 

As a young person, I’ve seen that it's very easy for people who are older to ignore the thoughts of young people. The first thing people asked me was if I was the intern; people didn’t recognize I was an elected official, just like everybody else at the table. But as a school board member, I have been very successful in increasing the awareness around what it means to be a diverse community and being inclusive in that diversity. That meant changing our dress code to allow African girls to wear head wraps. That meant starting a halal food program in our schools for Muslim kids. There's a lot that we've done that has been really valuable for our community. It speaks a lot to me to be a part of making that change.