Appreciation for Our 2021 Summer Interns!
Happy National Intern Day! At Praxis, we are so fortunate to have three outstanding summer interns in 2021: Ileana Lopez-Martinez, Raquel Motachwa, and Uma Nagarajan-Swenson. They have brought such incredible ideas, perspectives, and energy to our team this summer, and we are forever thankful for their contributions!
Ileana Lopez-Martinez
Health Justice Intern
Ileana supports Praxis in the areas of policy advocacy, equity-centered model policy development, and also worked to highlight how Praxis centers racial justice in our policy work. Ileana also developed a blog on centering reproductive justice in advocacy. Working closely with Praxis' policy staff, Ileana has taken the lead on ensuring Praxis' voice is heard in legislation. She is also helping to develop model food and beverage policy that centers community and equity in a way that builds upon community assets and strengths.
Raquel Motachwa
Dileep Gopal Bal Fellow
Raquel is taking a leadership role with Praxis' collaboration with ChangeLab Solutions and National Governor's Association, managing the interview process with incredible community organizers in Praxis' network that work with rural communities. In addition to identifying high-impact policies that address structural racism and equitable economic development, Raquel is researching transformational ways to measure community power and designing an accompanying tool. She also was a key collaborator in managing Praxis' annual network survey process designed to assess the policy priorities and organizing needs of Praxis' basebuilding partners, and is leading the team in analyzing over 60 surveys!
Uma Nagarajan-Swenson
Health Justice Communications Intern
Uma is partnering with Raquel on the rural organizer interviews to identify high-impact policies that address structural racism and equitable economic development, and is supporting the analysis process of the policies emerging from the interviews. Uma is also providing support to Praxis in developing a brief on cooperatives and democratic workplace practices as an outcome of our May-July Learning Circle with the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and Sustainable Economies Law Center. Uma is supporting Praxis' Communications Team in conducting podcast interviews to center community organizers engaging in food justice. She is currently writing a blog on the mental health impacts of COVID-19 and the role of community organizing and mutual aid!
In addition to their individual projects, our interns this year are also working collaboratively with the Praxis communications team to help us collect and synthesize data on and articulate how we are working towards racial justice.
Thank you, Ileana, Raquel, and Uma! We are so proud to have you at Praxis.