Priya Vulchi

Why you should listen

For a collective future of racial justice, we must educate and empower our young generation now. Yet, the first time 18-year-olds Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo were required to talk about race in school was the 10th grade.

That same year, Vulchi co-founded CHOOSE with Guo to equip us all with the tools we lack to both talk about race and act toward systemic change. Their latest publication, a racial literacy textbook and toolkit for educators called The Classroom Index, has been recognized by Princeton University's Prize in Race Relations & Not in Our Town's Unity Award, featured in Teen Vogue, the Philadelphia Inquirer, & the Huffington Post, and called a “social innovation more necessary than the iPhone” by Professor Ruha Benjamin.

After graduating from high school, Guo and Vulchi took a year before college to travel to all 50 US states and listen to hundreds of powerful stories about race, culture and intersectionality. They published their takeaways in the book Tell Me Who You Are, released via Penguin Random House in June 2019. Watch their 2018 TED Residency talk, and follow their journey on Instagram.