Akshara Santoshkumar is a junior at Barnard College, Columbia University studying political science and human rights. She contributes to research on caste and  through the Ambedkar Initiative at Columbia, and serves as a Senior Editor for the Columbia Political Review in the West Africa Cohort. She has also spent two summers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, interning with Teach For Bangladesh and The Hunger Project Bangladesh, where she worked on partnership development and youth leadership programming. Her academic interests focus on the politics of the MENA and South Asia regions, a perspective shaped by growing up in the Middle East in Cairo and Dubai. In her free time, Akshara enjoys attending live music shows and traveling.