Fellowship Project: Create videos to increase awareness about the importance of life skills in empowering young people from vulnerable backgrounds to flourish in today’s fast-changing world.

Highlights: Arya is serving as an American India Foundation (AIF) Clinton Fellow with Dream a Dream in Bangalore, Karnataka. For her Fellowship project, she is creating videos to increase awareness about the importance of life skills in empowering young people from vulnerable backgrounds to flourish in today’s fast-changing world. Arya is a social entrepreneur who has worked with underprivileged communities in Pune to advocate for equal educational opportunity for all students. She is the founder and CEO of Jazz Hands Foundation, a nonprofit organization that teaches English using drama. Through her nonprofit, Arya has worked towards organizing more than 500 student volunteers to teach English to understaffed schools in Pune. Arya graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts as a double major in Digital Multimedia and Environmental Studies. She is the recipient of the Marlene Sanders Award for her documentary “Stray,” which reports on the issue of a growing population of stray dogs in developing nations. Arya has also worked with the national employment law firm Sanford Heisler Sharp in New York, where she assisted victims of gender, age, and race discrimination. She primarily focused on the Dartmouth case where she assisted the firm in representing nine plaintiffs with claims of sexual assault, harassment and gender discrimination against the university and its professors. As an AIF Clinton Fellow, Arya hopes to keep finding new avenues to empower youth in the country to serve marginalized communities.