A recent alumna is the first Hunter graduate to be chosen for a prestigious development fellowship in India.
Anvitha Tammisetti ’25, a political-science major, won the American India Foundation’s Banyan Impact Fellowship, the premier U.S.-India service program for young international-development leaders.
AIF Banyan Impact Fellows work for 10 months at nonprofits across India to exchange technical skills and support women, children, and youth through improvements to education, livelihoods, and public health.
Tammisetti will work for a year in Puducherry, India, at the Satya Special School, an organization that works with persons with disabilities.
The fellowship demonstrates Hunter’s impact as an anchor institution and training ground for young changemakers in public policy.
Tammisetti, a Roosevelt and a Jewish Foundation for the Education of Women scholar, completed the Certificate in Public Policy at Roosevelt House. She did her capstone project on policies to alleviate medical debt. She interned at New York Legal Assistance Group in the legal health division, which supports low-income clients with legal and health issues.
She also interned with the Social Science Research Council at the Mercury Project, which combats health misinformation. That taught her about public-health research and global health issues.
Tammisetti, 22, grew up in Queens and speaks Telugu at home. She has visited India, but Puducherry is a new area for her, along with its language, Tamil.
“My public-policy certificate at Hunter helped me understand the role research plays in policy,” Tammisetti said. “I hope to use these research skills as a lawyer. The fellowship is a step in learning and using these skills in the field. It is a chance to connect with others who are leaders interested in driving change.”
Fellows receive a roundtrip ticket from their point of origin to India, along with health coverage, emergency support, and a monthly living stipend to cover basic living expenses such as rent, meals, incidentals, and local transportation related to their project.
About the Public Policy Program
Hunter College’s Public Policy Program, located in historic Roosevelt House, is based on the understanding that the preparation of informed individuals is the key to a vibrant participatory democracy. Students have an opportunity to interact first-hand with policy experts and practitioners, both in the classroom and outside, and learn how policies responding to urgent issues are created, how communities — across race, class, gender, sexuality, immigration status, among other differences — come together to demand change leading to greater equity and justice, and the ways in which the impact of laws can be assessed.
