Hana Kaur Mangat is currently a senior at Winston Churchill High School in Maryland. She will be attending Columbia University in the fall of 2018 as a hopeful major in Political Science and Human Rights. She is an active believer in the power of student voice, empathy, and dialogue building.

In 2012, Hana co-founded the youth-run organization, Sikh Kid 2 Kid, with the mission of eradicating ignorance with the power of education. Through Sikh Kid 2 Kid, she has played a key role in developing and implementing a religious literacy professional development program for educators. She facilitates the student-run Sikhism portion of the program, and develops resources for educator use. Hana has been a Sikh student advocate, speaking to the bullying of Sikh students and overall school climate issues at the Obama White House, the Department of Education, the National Academies of Science, Facebook HQ, etc. She served as a steering committee member to organize the first ever National Interfaith Bullying Prevention Summit.

Hana was a founding member and the Co-Chair of the Schools Programming and Policy Committee of Communities United Against Hate, a local network of organizations and individuals dedicated to combating bigotry. She served as a Youth-Correspondent for the National Organizations of Youth Safety and a Channel Kindness reporter for the Born This Way Foundation. She is also the president of her class and the co-founder of a school based diversity club, Cultural Society.

Hana was honored to be featured as an “Everyday Superhero” in the Ad Council’s “Love has No Labels” campaign and geo-activation game. She was a Carson Scholar, a Potomac Youth of the Year finalist, and a recipient of the NaisA Global Youth Leadership Award.