My advocacy work has been shaped by a consistent conviction: that the institutions tasked with protecting rights can only do so effectively when the people inside them understand how those rights are being undermined — not in the abstract, but in the specific strategies, narratives, and coalitions that drive backlash. The work I’ve done across UN spaces, civil society coalitions, and grassroots campaigns has been grounded in that principle.
Outright International
United Nations Intern · August 2023 – December 2023 · New York City
Outright International is a leading civil society organization dedicated to advancing the human rights of LGBTIQ people globally, with a focus on advocacy within the United Nations system. I joined Outright as part of Occidental College’s Kahane UN Program, one of thirteen seniors selected to intern within the UN ecosystem while taking courses on human rights and conflict prevention.
My work at Outright centered on the 78th session of the UN General Assembly Third Committee — the committee responsible for social, humanitarian, and human rights questions. This was an environment where advocacy, opposition monitoring, and real-time strategy operate simultaneously, and where the gap between policy language and lived consequence is unusually narrow.
UNGA Draft Resolution A/C.3/78/L.51
A core responsibility was tracking the progression of draft resolution A/C.3/78/L.51 — Strengthening the role of the United Nations in the promotion of democratization and enhancing periodic and genuine elections — which included SOGI-inclusive language that a coordinated bloc of member states was working to remove. I monitored committee sessions in real time, logging member state floor statements, voting behavior, and explanations of vote to build a live picture of how the opposition was organizing and where shifts were occurring.
This tracking fed directly into Outright’s advocacy strategy. Identifying which delegations were genuinely opposed versus strategically abstaining, and how regional bloc dynamics influenced individual state positions, allowed the team to prioritize its engagement. The resolution passed with the inclusive language preserved.
Opposition Monitoring of Anti-SOGI and Anti-SRHR Constituencies
Beyond the resolution itself, I engaged in broader opposition monitoring of anti-SOGI and anti-SRHR constituencies operating within the General Assembly. This meant tracking not just votes but narratives — understanding how opponents of inclusive language framed their positions, which arguments gained traction, and how the rhetorical strategies of anti-rights movements within the UN system mirrored (and sometimes directly borrowed from) broader right-wing movement dynamics I had studied in my academic work.
This experience deepened my understanding of how opposition to rights frameworks operates at the institutional level — not as scattered objection but as coordinated strategy with identifiable patterns, talking points, and coalition structures.
68th UN Commission on the Status of Women
I produced statements from Outright on inclusive, intersectional gender advocacy, including contributing to a joint NGO statement for the 68th UN Commission on the Status of Women. I also drafted policy analysis briefs and strategic reports that informed Outright’s advocacy efforts and directly contributed to position statements presented at the UN.
LGBTIQ Inclusion in Transitional Justice
I researched LGBTIQ inclusion in transitional justice processes for the creation of research primers — examining how post-conflict accountability frameworks integrate (or fail to integrate) the experiences of LGBTIQ people, and what that exclusion means for the legitimacy and completeness of transitional justice.
UN Special Procedures: Representation and Institutional Diversity
I gathered and analyzed demographic data on nominees for United Nations Special Procedures positions — independent human rights experts appointed by the Human Rights Council — to assess patterns in regional representation, gender balance, and institutional diversity across appointments.
Occidental College Kahane UN Program
August 2023 – December 2023 · New York City
Selected as one of thirteen Occidental College seniors to participate in the college’s flagship United Nations Program. Took advanced coursework on human rights and conflict prevention while interning within the UN system. The program grounded my academic study of international norms in practical engagement — understanding not just what rights frameworks say, but how they function operationally, where they succeed, and where they break down under political pressure.
Young Initiative on the Global Political Economy
Program Assistant · August 2021 – May 2024 · Occidental College
The John Parke Young Initiative is housed within Occidental’s McKinnon Center for Global Affairs and focused on examining alternatives to the global political and economic status quo — exploring questions of multilateralism, justice, equity, and governance.
Annual United Nations Week
I played an integral role in coordinating the annual United Nations Week, an event series that brought speakers, panel discussions, and programming on international diplomacy and multilateral governance to campus. My responsibilities included recruiting and coordinating speakers, managing venue bookings, handling media and technology needs, coordinating catering, and promoting events across campus channels.
Young Initiative Newsletter and Annual Report
I spearheaded the production of the Young Initiative Newsletter, released twice each year, covering the work of the Diplomacy and World Affairs department and discussing alternatives to the prevailing global political and economic order. I co-authored and compiled the Young Initiative Annual Report for donors and alumni, consolidating data on project funding, event impact, and scholarship distributions to inform planning for future initiatives.
Event Coordination Across Human Rights and Global Governance
Beyond UN Week, I coordinated, promoted, and executed a broader calendar of events covering topics across human rights, international diplomacy, intersectionality, justice, multilateralism, and global governance — including both in-person and hybrid events with 100+ attendees.
Field Research: Women’s Rights in Post-Revolution Tunis
Fall 2022 · Tunis, Tunisia
As part of the School for International Training’s program on Politics and Religious Integration in the Mediterranean, I conducted independent field research under the supervision of Dr. Raja Boussedra. I collected responses from women in the suburbs of Tunis about their experiences with Political Islam and Salafism and its impact on their rights following the 2011 Jasmine Revolution. Literature review and data collection were conducted in English and French.
This was my first experience conducting original field research in an international context — navigating cross-cultural dynamics, working in a second language, and grappling with the distance between how rights are codified and how they are experienced on the ground. It remains foundational to how I think about the gap between institutional frameworks and lived reality.
Grassroots Advocacy and Student Governance
Done Waiting · Phone Bank Leader
April 2021 – September 2021
Led nationwide volunteer phone-bank teams for grassroots advocacy of progressive Congressional campaigns. Provided training on phone-banking platforms (Dialer, OpenVPB, TurboVPB), monitored team performance during shifts, and ensured volunteer confidence and efficiency. This work sits at the opposite end of the scale from UN advocacy — direct, ground-level engagement with democratic participation — but it shaped my understanding of how political mobilization works in practice, not just in institutional theory.
Associated Students of Occidental College · Senate Director of Academic Affairs
September 2020 – May 2022
Served as the primary student liaison to faculty and administrative academic committees, advocating for curriculum improvements and student needs. Led the Academic Affairs Committee and facilitated internal restructuring to promote equitable representation. Conducted institutional research via Qualtrics analyzing the needs of international and multinational students, producing recommendations that improved the International Programs Office’s engagement strategies.
As a member of the 2021–22 Inaugural Executive Committee, helped launch the Final Mile Fund for graduate school application grants, prioritizing first-generation and low-income students. Collaborated on the allocation of a $500K+ student budget and the launch of the ASOC Savings Investment Portfolio.
How This Work Connects
The through-line across these experiences is an interest in how rights are contested — not in the abstract, but through specific mechanisms: the language inserted into or removed from a resolution, the coalition dynamics that determine whether inclusive provisions survive a committee vote, the narratives that opponents deploy to frame exclusion as cultural preservation. Understanding those mechanisms at the institutional level is what I brought to Outright; understanding them at the movement level is what my academic research adds.
This is also why I see a direct connection between this work and trust and safety. The dynamics I tracked at the UN — coordinated opposition, strategic narrative framing, exploitation of procedural ambiguity — are structurally similar to the challenges platforms face when harmful actors use legitimate-sounding language to advance exclusionary agendas at scale. The difference is the venue. The underlying problem — how do you identify and respond to bad-faith appropriation of good-faith frameworks — is the same.