We recently connected with Jahnavi Rao and have shared our conversation below.

Jahnavi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

At sixteen, you can’t vote, and are told there is not much you can do to influence governmental decisions. So the 2016 election passed me by, and decisions were made that affected me and my peers the most of anyone, and I felt helpless and unheard.

And after seeing my classmates on both sides frustrated at their apparent lack of importance to politicians, of the irrelevance of our worth and opinions, we decided enough. Maybe we could not vote, but our peers could, and we ourselves could in 2 years. So we created a small school club called 2018 New Voters, and when I was still 17 and unable to register to vote myself, we registered 85% of my high school in the suburbs of Philadelphia’s eligible population to vote.

Fast forward 7 years later to right now. New Voters has grown to a national 501c3 nonprofit, with 400+ high school chapters running registration drives across the country and 80,000 students registered to vote and counting for the 2020 election.

If there is anything that working on New Voters has shown me, it is that young people have immense capacity for change, and if given the opportunity, will put in the work and change things.

I remember feeling helpless. I remember looking at numbers on a television screen and colors on a map and knowing I was not among them. But each year I see so many students join our internship program or run a drive at their school who can not even vote yet. While their individual number is not up there on that screen, their influence is, and the students they inspired and turned out are too, so that youth issues HAVE to be prioritized and addressed by lawmakers.

That is why now, 7 years later, I still run New Voters and, upon graduating in May 2023, joined the organization as our full-time President. We have adapted to continue supporting our students and develop their leadership skills, collaborate effectively with other organizations, and train HS students to conduct novel and rigorous research to find the best way to do all the above, so we truly can be heard. This it is essential to our democracy functioning, to young people believing in our democracy and to the continued existence of our democracy.

The decisions being made today influence our generation more than any other, and we deserve to have a say!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am the President and Founder of New Voters and have dedicated the past 7 years to amplifying the voices of high school students as leaders, voters and researchers in the civic space. Upon graduating from Harvard in 2023, concentrating in Government with a secondary in Music, I am now the full-time President of New Voters.

At New Voters, I have directly led over 200 directors and interns and under her leadership, New Voters has grown to civically engage over 80,000 high school students across 300+ high schools in 39 states. I also serve as the Director and Founder of the New Voters Research Network, where I lead a team of youth to conduct original research on high school political behavior, and am a Senior Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland.

I have also served as an intern in the White House Office of Public Engagement, Deputy Campaign Manager on a state-legislative race, Director of “Boston Votes!” at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Head of Youth Engagement at the DNC. I previously was a research assistant at Harvard’s Sustainability, Transparency, Accountability and Research Lab and UPenn’s Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. I traveled to Australia to conduct research with the Behavioural Economics Team for the Australian Government.

I am also passionate about music and vocal performance, having studied Indian Classical and then Western (Operatic) vocal performance from the age of 6. I am a nationally ranked singer (NAfME & PMEA) and have performed in professional operatic productions in Italy and at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia (International Opera Theater). I have portrayed the roles of Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) and Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro) in Harvard College Opera productions.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In 2023, we conducted a listening tour of 30+ youth-serving entities every week (such as the YMCA, When We All Vote, the White House), alongside high school students and teachers to understand their experiences in high school voter registration. Every organization expressed concerns about the lack of coordination and trust in the youth voter registration space. This competitive dynamic often results in poor information sharing on where organizations have active chapters, which causes other organizations to divert aid from schools that need support. Additionally, individuals consistently lamented the lack of rigorous evaluation of high school voter registration methods, and were often unsure about the efficacy of their own programs and the underlying drivers of youth civic participation. Notably, every organization experienced a severe dropoff in student participation post 2020, with most reporting that their number of active chapters had decreased by almost 90%.

NVRN and NV Collaborative were conceived to address the challenges of rigorous evaluation and lack of coordination, and will continue to implement them. No one has attempted to bring together solely HS voting organizations. Our coalition has already begun meeting, tracking schools and sharing best practices. There is barely any research on HS voting, but in the past 8 months the NVRN has begun 20 projects, trained 30+ HS researchers and published thrice. With the 2024 election around the corner, we are poised to seize the opportunity to enable collaboration and useful research.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

There are plenty of studnets who start initiatives in high school or college, and I can count myself among them. The reason I am still doing this post graduation and 7 years after beginning is due to 1) incredible mentors and advisors 2) prioritizing this work over all other things (including school).

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.new-voters.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jahnavirao/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jahnavirao/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jahnavisrao
• Other: https://nvresearch.substack.com https://newvoters.substack.com