Meet Anushka Kalyan | High School Senior, Community Organizer, Climate Advocate

We had the good fortune of connecting with Anushka Kalyan and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Anushka, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
Growing up, I missed my Indian grandmother at events like Grandparents Day, as she felt alienated by America’s traditions, despite being a longtime citizen. At 13, I decided to help bridge my grandmother’s cultural disconnect by explaining a hallmark of American culture – the voter guide. That year, as I guided her to understand her civic environment, she cast her first ballot, marking a bold shift from years of silencing her voice.

Empowering my grandmother revealed to me that many, like her, had not voted due to being unfamiliar with the process. Frustrated by gaps in outreach discouraging first-time, primarily immigrant voters, I co-founded VR’ing Democracy, an organization simulating civic experiences through virtual reality. Watching participants, including my grandmother, experience representation at the press of a “Power On” button furthered my passion for making civic engagement more inclusive.

Through grassroots fundraising and partnerships with other civic and youth-led organizations, I’m proud that VR’ing Democracy has enabled people like my grandparents nationwide to visualize themselves in the voting process. Civic engagement is deeply personal, and through VR’ing Democracy growing chapters, we are excited to further our approach to making first-time, immigrant voters feel truly empowered.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
As a youth climate organizer, I always feel a bit out of place when I’m asked about my “journey,” since I feel like it is always evolving and has SO much room for growth and improvement! However, I started climate advocacy in Sacramento due to how much of my extended family lives in Chennai, which is a coastal city in South India. Growing up, I frequently visited Chennai’s beaches, but over time, started noticing how families like mine would encounter pollution of all kinds strewn carelessly along the once-pristine landscape. My hometown of Sacramento, California, wasn’t far behind, and I could recognize that once I came back home, the same issues of environmental degradation would persist.

I started climate advocacy by taking local action. I joined the Environmental Council of Sacramento, a local nonprofit, to learn more about their regional work, especially as it relates to land use and sustainable development. I quickly fell in love with this topic. (I oftentimes even nerd out about it by watching YouTube video essays on sustainable development – they’re pretty funny and I highly recommend them!) Through joining the Transportation Committee, I could see that I was one step closer to understanding the highly nuanced issues that my family in India (and California!) were deeply afflicted by.

After joining a few other regional and national campaigns, I was fortunate to become involved in the Fridays for Future Global Climate Strikes, which are entirely youth-organized. Through organizing for climate policies locally, such as pushing for the Making Polluters Pay bill in California, I’ve grown to relish connecting with other grassroots organizations in their fight for collective liberation. As I shout into my sky-blue megaphone, I’m always reminded of the intersectional nature in this work, which has allowed me to embrace and support causes other than only environmental justice. Social justice of all kinds is undoubtedly intertwined, and I’m incredibly fortunate to be a part of a generation that recognizes the urgency of the fight.

While the journey towards a more perfect world is exhilarating, it is certainly humbling at times as well. For example, after debriefing with my interviewer for a climate-related position that I did not ultimately receive with Sacramento County, I was initially upset that, despite my seemingly smooth interview, the results were not what I had hoped. While in the moment, I felt defeated, my interviewer reassured me, telling me that I was a great activist. However, what I need to improve on was dedicating the same amount of time and effort to becoming a great advocate. He explained to me that while an activist is highly effective in pushing for radical change, it’s more difficult to translate that energy into decision-making spaces themselves. (For example, you would definitely get a few side eyes if you went marching into the California Legislature carrying a megaphone and chanting with a horde of teenagers behind you!) From then on, I knew that if I wanted to make effective change, I’d have to learn how to adapt to my surroundings, and listen to what those in power were saying so that I could effectively work towards changing their minds. 🙂

In my climate advocacy, this translated into diving deeper into legislative work! Lobbying in Sacramento had always felt foreign to me, but through forming partnerships with other organizations, such as the California Environmental Justice Coalition and the Youth vs. Fossil Fuels network. While I had to learn to moderate myself at times, doing so taught me how to respectfully dissent. I was fortunate to even give a workshop on the importance of civil discourse at the United Nations Conference of Youth in 2024, the UN’s annual youth climate conference, where I learned about international climate discussions and was inspired to continue similar advocacy in my own community.

As I reflect over my experiences over the past four years, climate advocacy has been my home. I’m continually awed to be in the presence of incredible organizers, advocates, activists, and passionate people who embody the claim that climate justice is social justice. As I continue new journeys over the next few years, especially as it relates to my educational goals of studying public policy in college, I can’t wait to keep working and advocating for a sustainable future.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Having lived in Sacramento for most of my life (excluding the first four years when I was in Chicago haha), here are some of my favorite spots! A lot of it includes Indian restaurants that I go to with my family, since we’re South Indian, and might be marginally skewed by the fact that these are general teenage hangout spots haha in my area, but here are my tops in general. 🙂

Restaurants: Mantra (South Indian food in Folsom), Tower Cafe (cute eclectic cafe in downtown Sacramento), Chaat Paradise (favorite thing to order here is their Gobi Manchurian), Thai Paradise,

Hang outs: Ding Tea (boba!!), NuYo (frozen yogurt, I’m especially a fan of their lychee jelly), walking around Old Sacramento

General spots to visit: Any hikes in Auburn (we frequently visit the Clementine Trail), World Peace Rose Garden, Crocker Art Museum, Capitol area 🙂

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
So many people and things to be grateful for! I will always be thankful to my family for supporting me and my goals in every way possible, but I also think that my ongoing journey as an advocate and activist would be incomplete without my IB World Religions class that I took during my junior year of high school. In addition to theology and global philosophies, we also discussed topics such as what it means for modern issues, such as the climate crisis and women’s voting rights, to be viewed through diverse lenses. While my previous biases encouraged me to only understand these topics through a certain, oftentimes more progressive lens, I began to understand why people, such as those in my extended family and those I interacted with at school every day, saw things a bit differently than I did. In my IB World Religions class, I felt like I could truly be myself – definitely nerdy, purely curious, and eager to learn more about the tangible world around me. As a community organizer, I transferred these lessons to learning how to openly listen to diverse perspectives. I will always have convictions in my beliefs, but at the same time, the class taught me how to accept opposition, even if at my core, I vehemently disagree with it. When I’m chanting in the streets of Sacramento with my megaphone advocating for stronger climate policies or for human rights internationally, I recognize that I oftentimes appeal to a very self-selected population. However, IB World Religions taught me to constantly be curious, keep listening, and recognize that the conversation goes beyond just me.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anushkakalyan_/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anushka-kalyan-6882242a5