Hi everyone! My name is Aaditi Lele and I’m a senior this year in the journalism program. This is my second year on the LEAF staff and I will be serving as the Lead Copy Editor and Twitter Manager. As I immersed myself more and more in political and social justice issues, I found myself needing an outlet to express my viewpoints and inform others. From this experience, I discovered my passion for journalism and joined the Journalism program last year. That decision was definitely one of the best ones I’ve ever taken because my experience writing for the LEAF has been phenomenal! As for a little bit about me, I’m really passionate about teaching young people about politics and social justice issues through my writing. I write for a publication called Defiant Movement Magazine where I get to cover topics like immigration, electoral politics, and diversity & inclusion (if you’re interested, you can check out more of my work here: https://linktr.ee/AaditiLele!). In addition, I also serve as Vice President of a youth organization called Gen Z Writes where I get to read, write, edit, and publish stories, poems, and articles by youth across the globe (you can check out our website here: https://genzwrites.weebly.com/!). At SHS, I’m also involved in a few other activities that relate to international relations and law. I serve as President of our Model UN club where I get to debate global issues and I’m also a part of our Mock Trial team.  Outside of school, I traveled with a program Citizen University’s Youth Collaboratory to learn about civic literacy, education, and engagement which eloped me found my community initiative, The Civic Immigrant Initiative. I am also involved with environmental justice and activism through Zero Hour Ohio. This past summer, I got to intern with the Kate Schroder for Congress campaign which was a super amazing experience to explore politics from an internal point of view. In my free time, I love to read, paint, practice calligraphy, bullet journal, crochet, watch Netflix, & listen to music! In the future, I hope to study a combination of Public Policy, Political Science, International Relations, and Economics in college and eventually become an immigration or human rights lawyer. Thanks for sticking around until the end to learn a bit more about me and I can’t wait to get to know all of you better through the LEAF this year :)