Bethany Kirkpatrick
Bethany Kirkpatrick is one of the Co-Editors-in-Chief and is a second-year Masters in Public Policy Student at the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to grad school, she taught middle school English and French in North Carolina. Originally from Nashville, she worked in Mayor John Cooper’s communications and housing departments over the summer of 2022. Her professional interests include teacher retention and housing affordability. She holds a BA in History and Education Studies from Davidson College.
Divya Jain
Divya Jain is one of the Co-Editors-in-Chief of the Gender Policy Journal and is a current second-year Masters in Public Policy Student at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is concurrently a fourth-year medical student from Kansas and hopes to be a future OB-GYN physician, focusing her work on reproductive health policy.
Ahmed Raza
Ahmed is an editor of the Gender Policy Journal. He is a MPA candidate and a JFK fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. He brings extensive knowledge of policy and programmatic issues from low and middle income countries as they relate to gender inequalities and health outcomes. He completed his post graduate studies in life sciences, human nutrition and applied economics (with a focus on natural resources).
Alexis Sargent
Alexis Sargent is a MPP Candidate at HKS, studying democracy, political communications, media disinformation, and violence against women. Alexis previously worked at The Washington Post and interned at the United Nations, US Department of Justice, US Congress and on political campaigns. Alexis is passionate about violence against women and volunteers at the US national sexual assault hotline. After HKS, she hopes to work in political/social issues journalism or work in progressive political communications. Alexis is from Michigan. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Michigan State University, she was named a Marshall Scholarship finalist, Rhodes Scholarship finalist, and was awarded the James Madison College Outstanding Senior Award by her department faculty.
Barkha Tripathi
Barkha is a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School, pursuing her degree in public policy. Prior to coming to HKS, she led her social enterprise in India— The Zero Period. It works to enable comprehensive sexuality education for pre-adolescent children in public schools. She is deeply passionate about gender equity and early childhood development. At the gender policy journal, her role involves editorial support and social media management.
Bhawna Prakash
Bhawna is a mid-career MPA student at HKS. As a management consultant, she advised governments to design and implement inclusive policies and initiatives to support women and underrepresented communities. She has a strong commitment to women’s entrepreneurship, inclusive development, and gender equality. Her objective as an editor of the Gender Policy Journal is to discuss solutions and present current gender issues and tales.
Joanne Sowell
Joanne is an attorney, community activist and philanthropist earning a Masters in Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. A Nashville, Tennessee resident, Joanne is passionate about making Tennessee a welcoming and inclusive place to live. Besides practicing law, she has worked at social service agencies, owned a social enterprise and been an active volunteer on political campaigns and in numerous community projects.
Kaamila Patherya
Kaamila is a first-year MPP student at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her background is at the intersection of impact evaluation and technology. She is passionate about climate and gender, and has worked across evaluation and policy projects within the space. She has a Master’s in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Calcutta.
Kristi Synold
Prior to attending HKS to purse a MC/MPA, Kristi worked with the Administration for Native Americans (ANA) on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples crisis, which showed the importance of understanding the intersection between climate change, land rights, and gender policy. As a part of this Journal, Kristi is hoping to continue to raise the voices of Indigenous people of all genders and work to create policy that reaches gender equity for all communities.
Nanditha Menon
Nanditha is a first year Master in Public Policy student from India at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her focus lies in socio-economic development and she has a decade of experience working on related issues with marginalised communities across the private and not for profit sectors as well as with the government. An engineering undergraduate, most recently she worked on ensuring access to government entitlements among the urban poor.
Rick Miles
Rick is a second year MPP Student at HKS from the San Francisco Bay Area. As a policy student Rick focuses on issues of gender and violence, campaigns of disinformation, and transportation and autonomous vehicle policy. Outside the classroom he likes to DJ, take photographs, and cook. Rick is excited to be an editor for the Gender Policy Journal and participate in the robust conversation and community surrounding gender and feminism at HKS!
Ridhi Agarwal
Ridhi is a Master’s candidate in Public Administration with a focus on International Development, and a dedicated economist-in-training. She places great importance on gender-sensitive policy making and believes that the best way to address gender inequality is by giving a platform to marginalized voices. Ridhi is passionate about working for women and queer rights in India. In her relatively free time, she works for the young scholar committee at the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE).
Saleha Ahmed
Saleha is an editor of the Gender Policy Journal and is an MPA student at the Harvard Kennedy School and an MBA student at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Prior to pursuing her dual degree, she worked in the FinTech industry in San Francisco, specifically in the lending and loan servicing space where she helped underbanked communities gain access to financial resources and services. She is particularly interested in the intersection between FinTech and public policy with respect to providing greater financial education and resources to women and other marginalized communities in the USA.
Samriddhi Vij
Samriddhi is a current Masters in Public Policy candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, she completed her undergraduation in Economics from Delhi University and masters in Economics from Delhi School of Economics. Later she worked for India’s largest education non-profit, Pratham Education Foundation, where she led program management nationally for elementary grades, girls’ education and life skills. She is interested in working towards developing more holistic policies that focus on integrating intersectionalities between different developmental domains.