Finding Her Voice - and a Family: Anisha’s Journey with NewComm

Anisha joined the first NewComm cohort, and since then, we have followed and observed in awe her journey. When we first started interviewing her for this piece, Anisha said with a laugh,  “Before NewComm, I liked to think I was radical—but I really wasn’t. Instead, I was very complacent in my thinking, and a lot of that came from how I was educated. My high school was a charter school where you’re taught to think a certain way. They guide you through everything. I wasn’t used to thinking independently.”

NewComm, however, changed that.

Being part of a space where critical dialogue and self-reflection were part of everyday conversations helped Anisha break out of old patterns. One of her first challenges was reading The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. “I thought, okay, this is a good book. But everyone around me was pulling out things I couldn’t see, and I had to ask myself—what am I missing? And why am I missing it?”

That moment sparked a shift in how she approached literature—and life. “NewComm taught me how to analyze things more deeply. I don’t just look for themes and motifs anymore; I look at how stories reflect real life, how fictional characters go through the same things we do in our communities.”

This new perspective didn’t just stay in the classroom. Anisha took it into her school, where she recently started a Multicultural Cooking Experience Club, blending culture, community, and entrepreneurship. “We cook different cultural foods every week and raise money. I even asked Chidi [NewComm’s CEO & Founder] for feedback—he really knows how to get things done.”

Her admiration for Chidi’s leadership left a mark: “The way I saw CEOs before and after meeting Chidi was totally different. He dreams big, but he makes it real. That truly inspired me. NewComm helped me stop thinking in pieces and started making me see the bigger picture – in what ways is poverty man-made? What are the power imbalances at play in our realities? How do we deconstruct our own biases?”

Anisha describes NewComm not just as a program, but as a family. “You could find other programs like this, but at NewComm, I felt like I had found a family. We talk about real things—abolition, queerness, the prison system. And we have fun. It’s a space where I can contribute meaningfully to big conversations, and feel safe in doing so.”

This sense of belonging has become something Anisha says she now seeks out in every space. “NewComm created a motif in my life. I want to be in places that feel like home. And home, to me, means being supported but not indulged. It means being challenged, but with care.”

That guiding principle helped her choose her university. After applying to 15 schools and hearing back from several, she committed to one that gave her that same feeling. “When I visited, I just knew that’s where I had to be – it felt like home, and I knew what home felt like because of NewComm.”

Anisha’s next step? An internship with the Youth Action Institute under the Center for Justice Innovation, where she’ll use Participatory Action Research (PAR) to gather stories from communities affected by gun violence and injustice. “They train young people to go into neighborhoods, interview people, and write reports using the kind of language that truly resonates with those communities. Looking for institutes who believe in that kind of intentional, justice-driven research, for me, was inspired by NewComm.”

And she’s not stopping there. Networking events hosted by NewComm opened doors she never expected. “As a Black woman, seeing other successful Black professionals in fields where we’re underrepresented—it was eye-opening. I even got to talk to someone from the U.N. working in counter-terrorism. That was a dream.”

Anisha's journey through NewComm has been nothing short of transformative. Her voice today is that of a future changemaker who is unafraid to dream big - and speak up - and she's just getting started.