This article is part of the series "Profiles in Public Service," sharing the stories of Batten School community members making a difference in leadership and public policy across the past fifteen years.

In fall 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Asha Chadha (Batten ’20) was thrown into a seemingly impossible situation. Just out of UVA, Chadha was teaching math to sixth graders through Teach for America, spending the entire academic year online for a school in Alexandria, Va.

The needs were big, and Chadha, 24, did not have a teaching degree. But sixth grade math wasn’t foreign territory for the self-proclaimed “math nerd,” who volunteered with a math program for middle school girls when she was in high school. And the public policy, problem-solving and leadership training she’d received at the Batten School proved indispensable.

In her first year of teaching, she stepped into leadership roles at the school — becoming the team lead for a group of teachers who shared the same 100 sixth graders and serving as a math facilitator, staying on top of the curriculum and measuring students’ growth.

“Those are things that I don’t think I would have had the confidence to do in my first year teaching without having actual leadership training,” she said. “Batten gave me the confidence to use my voice ... and proper communication skills. I felt very confident being able to explain my idea or explain my argument.”

Early Batten fan

Chadha grew up in a multi-cultural home, fully immersed in the cultures of her parents, who immigrated to the United States in the 1980s. Her mother is from Bolivia and her father is from India. She’s long had a desire to advocate for people like her parents.

Chadha set her sights on Batten early on — as a high school underclassman in Fairfax, Va. who was interested in foreign affairs at the time — due to a UVA event she attended which included a talk from a Batten admissions officer.

“She just told me everything I wanted to hear about what Batten had to offer, what public policy was and actual hands-on work, solving issues and learning about public policy issues and gaining the skills to be able to be an advocate,” Chadha said.

Fast forward a few years, and she counts herself lucky to have been admitted to Batten’s undergraduate program where a focus of her study was on immigration policy. The experience lived up to the promises made by that admissions officer Chadha heard from years ago. “I felt like I was immediately in a community of very passionate people with diverse interests,” she said.

At Batten, she had the freedom to explore topics of interest, including immigration issues and, later, education. “The frame was given to you, and it was up to you and every student with what they chose to do with it,” she said.

She was surrounded by people who valued her unique voice, perspective and advocacy. Chadha was part of the founding of the Batten Latinx Network, which wouldn’t have been possible without support from administration, she said. “Batten made it very clear that they wanted to promote minority voices and allow more space for diverse students.”

And faculty members stressed the importance of compassion and consideration in policymaking. Chadha carried that emphasis on empathy into her classroom as she grappled with teacher shortages and supporting students who didn’t have all they needed to learn.

Activating her purpose

Now, Chadha is looking to the future. Her two-year teaching stint inspired her to seek ways to do more to address the issues her students faced. She wanted to find a way to work for those who didn’t understand their rights or weren’t able to advocate for themselves, including parents of the children she taught who were immigrants.

This fall, she entered UVA Law School. Wherever her career leads, she knows she’ll be working with the immigrant community in some capacity and using her Batten education, finding ways to use her voice and platform as a woman of color with a multicultural background and a daughter of immigrants, to advocate and educate.

“[Batten] gave me a place to advocate and use my voice in a room that wasn’t used to it,” she said. “And transferring that over to law school, that has been my sole purpose — to constantly be able to advocate and provide a different perspective.”