Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Vaishnavi Moturi. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Vaishnavi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I have always been fascinated by public policy and the intricacies of drafting legislation, ideating the aforementioned legislation, and collaborating with people at all levels to develop policies that change lives. As a freshman in high school, I became increasingly invested in writing social critiques and policy analyses/call-to-actions which I’ve recently begun publishing on Medium. Through such analyses, I’ve learned how evaluating governance and policies is not quite so black and white as I’ve previously assumed because not only are there multiple parties involved but the people who are supposed to directly be impacted by that governance and policies are often not those who are impacted in the way intended. My first piece examining said intricacies, was a combination of a book review and a social critique as I analyzed how Rohinton Mistry’s novel A Fine Balance, explained a post-Partition, post-Independence India and how the Emergency resulted in a tumultuous nation-building process (as nation-building inherently is).

CitizenZ was thus born out of a desire to bring together passionate youth from across the globe to engage in meaningful, respectful policy discourse in the hopes of developing nuanced views and analyses of existing policies and potentially ideas for future policies. We hoped to encourage non-traditional discourse through podcast discussions, detailed policy briefs, and a monthly digital newspaper as well as further encourage policy journalism in young aspiring writers through journalism workshops. We want our generation to bring out our unique perspectives and ideas that will eventually come to shape our world!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

In a world of diverse opinions and perspectives, CitizenZ hopes to encourage the formation of individual thoughts through objective policy research and an open mind. Our motto is “Creating a Generation of Global Citizens” and part of being a global citizen is having an awareness and more important empathy of global issues in the desire to make real, tangible change in our communities. We were founded in the summer of 2022 and since then have formed a team spanning 10+ countries and our policy briefs have received views from thousands of users from over 30 countries.

We are a grassroots youth-led organization that aims to encourage respectful and non-traditional discourse in public policy and foster the initiation of unique ideas that can better our communities. Inspired by our collective passion for public policy and the potential it holds for unlocking a more equitable, promising future, CitizenZ brought together young activists, leaders, and changemakers from across the globe to cultivate a generation of global citizens and to foster the initiation of unique, thought-out ideas.

Through thorough, well-researched policy briefs on diverse topics from student immigration impacts on the economy to the hype on longevity drugs, informal and formal podcast discussions, and journalism workshops, CitizenZ provides an invaluable hub for young people to collaborate on policy analysis and ideation as well as youth-led mentorship for aspiring policymakers.

We function on the premise that change starts with an idea and an idea can become change only through collaboration, discussion, and debate – all of which ultimately move the needle forward and form the foundation of CitizenZ.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In starting CitizenZ, we faced a lot of challenges in terms of how to structure the organization. I knew I wanted it to be an “open organization” in that anyone, anywhere would be free to join and contribute their thoughts but at the same time I recognized how having a small team of writers would better help foster creative ideas and encourage the ideas of everybody in the group.

To combat this we formed a leadership system in which members with experience in writing policy briefs led individual teams for different categories such as environmental policy, public health policy, or technology policy thus encouraging people with common interests to collaborate with each other.

Any advice for managing a team?

With CitizenZ specifically, our organization and mission depends on collaboration and without it, CitizenZ would effectively fall apart. So, I think managing a team requires an understanding of each person’s strengths, leveraging those strengths, and recognizing individual potential. By delegating tasks by skill, we are able to create not only a more effective organization but also a more sustainable one.

What’s amazing is that each person involved in our organization is incredibly talented in their own way, from people who are lyrically gifted to those who have an extraordinary mastery of policy research and analysis and by leveraging these gifts, we can create an organization positioned to truly create that “Generation of Global Citizens”.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hellocitizenz.org/
• Other: Email: [email protected]
  Phone Number: 972-469-4274