Gigi Taylor, a professor in the English department at UNC Chapel Hill, remembers Bhairavi Jayaraman walking up to her after class, nervous about applying to a fellowship opportunity.
“Well come on upstairs, I want to introduce you to the dean who shared this opportunity,” Taylor told Jayaraman, then an undergraduate at UNC studying Economics and Public Policy.
By the time Jayaraman left the dean’s office, Taylor said, “he was so impressed with her that he made it a point of stopping by my office to thank me for introducing the two of them because he enjoyed the conversation so much.”
“She’s got courage,” Taylor said.
Now, Jayaraman, currently a first-year master’s in public policy student at UNC, joins Carolina Demography as a Belk Impact Fellow. The Belk Impact Fellowship is a 10-month program at the Hunt Institute that places future social impact leaders at organizations like nonprofits or education systems across North Carolina.
“We are proud to continue our partnership with the Hunt Institute and have the opportunity to participate in preparing young leaders like Bhairavi for a career in public service,” said Nathan Dollar, Director of Carolina Demography. “We are happy to have Bhairavi on our team this year.”
At Carolina Demography, Jayaraman is most looking forward to seeing the real-world implications of population science research and applying data analysis skills in the educational equity space.
“Being in college and having friends from other parts of the state, hearing about their experiences with education- like some resources that they didn’t have, that I thought was a given,” Jayaraman, who went to high school in Cary, said. “Hearing about those disparities always struck something within me.”
“I’m hoping to also create some blog posts about things that interest me and further my knowledge about North Carolina’s education landscape, but also other facets of North Carolina that I might not have known had I not been working here,” she added.
Bhairavi recently worked on Carolina Demography’s annual four-part series about the demographics of North Carolina’s more than 7 million registered voters. You can read that project here.
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