Smita Nadia Hussain is a lifelong activist and advocate, who aims to connect grassroots work to systemic change and reform. In 2020 she won her election to the Board of Education in Bloomingdale, NJ, and is the first Bangladeshi American woman to be elected to a Board of Education in New Jersey's history. She is the co-founder and current board member of the Bangladeshi American Women's Developmen
t Initiative (BAWDi), a community initiative empowering Bangladeshi women and girls in NJ. She works as a Senior Campaign Director at MomsRising, where works on Federal Child Care and Early Learning policy. She serves on the National Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as the Affiliate representative from the New Jersey ACLU Affiliate. she also serves on the ACLU New Jersey Board, where she serves as their Equity Officer. Prior to this, she was Program Director at the Andrew Goodman Foundation, where she developed and led their Vote Everywhere program, focusing on making voting more systematically accessible for communities around the country. Nadia has also worked to organize youth in Richmond, CA, taught photojournalism classes to refugee students in Oakland, CA, and served as a domestic violence advocate for South Asian women and families.
