News and Announcements
Student Leaders Driving Change: Introducing the 2025 Michelson 20MM Fellows
Published Date
- June 25, 2025

Four students across each system of public education in California are joining the Michelson 20MM Foundation to hone their advocacy skills and advocate for a better future. Over the next 10 months, students will lead projects in our four program areas—Student Basic Needs, Smart Justice, Textbook Affordability, and Digital Equity—with the guidance from Michelson 20MM experts. Students play a pivotal role in advocating for education equity and a better future for all, we are excited to partner with them and continue building student power across California.
Please join us in welcoming this year’s group of change makers: the 2025 Michelson 20MM Student Fellowship Cohort!


Ria Babaria
Textbook Affordability Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles

Ria Babaria (she/her) is a second-year student at UCLA majoring in Public Affairs. From Riverside, California, Ria focuses on education policy that expands mental health, financial support, and civic participation for marginalized youth. Her work is grounded in the belief that education should be a right, not a privilege.
Ria’s journey into student leadership began with a fundamental belief that education should be a tool for liberation, not a gatekeeping structure that deepens inequality. In high school, she saw how access to education, mental health, and financial stability shaped the trajectories of her peers. What started as a passion quickly became purpose. Since then, Ria has written over five pieces of legislation and co-sponsored over 50 in the California State Legislature in line with her passions. At UCLA, Ria researches assistant school violence, exclusionary discipline, and restorative justice policies in Michigan.
In all settings Ria consistently focuses on access, dignity, and structural transformation. She views youth leadership not as a symbolic gesture, but as an essential mechanism for reimagining systems that were not built to serve everyone equally.
For Ria, textbook affordability is a critical yet often overlooked barrier to student success. She understands that after paying tuition, many low-income and first-generation students can’t afford required materials. In a state like California, where public higher education is meant to be a public good, we must remove cost barriers that block full student participation.
Through the fellowship, Ria hopes to connect with a network of student leaders committed to advancing equity and affordability in higher education. She is particularly interested in collaborating on textbook policy reform throughout California, including eliminating automatic textbook charges, advocating for campus stipends, and revising UC-wide policies that affect affordability.
Ria plans to pursue a J.D. or Master’s in Public Policy to continue her work at the intersection of legal advocacy and education reform. Her long-term goal is to transform how schools respond to gender-based violence, mental health crises, and systemic inequality. She hopes to create accessible legal and policy training for youth impacted by violence and institutional neglect. This will ensure that those most affected by broken systems are not only heard, but equipped to lead change.
Andrea Lara Jara
Student Basic Needs Fellow; Cal Poly Humboldt and Moreno Valley College

Andrea Lara Jara (she/her) is a social work student at Cal Poly Humboldt, where she focuses on decolonizing social work practices to better support historically marginalized communities. She is passionate about storytelling and the many ways it can advocate, heal, compel, and liberate people.
Andrea started as a peer facilitator for the student-parent support group and worked in the CalWORKs office at Moreno Valley College. She aimed to build a parenting student community through weekly discussions, live events, and virtual presentations. As she connected with fellow students, it sparked a deeper question: Were parenting students included in shaping the systems meant to help them? That curiosity led her to Project SPARC (Student Parents Are Reimagining CalWORKs). As a SPARC Leader, she collaborated with peers to meet with campus leadership and policy makers on bureaucratic barriers. It was through this work that she realized meaningful solutions must be developed with, not for, communities.
Andrea believes student basic needs are a key measure of current policy effectiveness. When students struggle to meet basic needs, it reflects policy failures rather than personal shortcomings. As the Basic Needs Student Fellow, Andrea hopes to uplift the lived experiences of students and contribute to building systems that reflect their realities. She is particularly interested in supporting policy conversations by staying grounded in the experiences of those navigating these systems firsthand.
Andrea plans to pursue a dual Master of Social Work (MSW) and Juris Doctor (JD) degree to continue supporting policies that center dignity and care. By amplifying lived experiences, she hopes to advance equity one story at a time.
Chloe Serrano
Smart Justice Fellow; University of California, Los Angeles

Chloe is a rising senior at the University of California, Los Angeles, studying Asian American Studies and Public Affairs. She was born and raised in Buena Park, CA, and is a proud, unapologetic Korean Filipina. Chloe benefited from grants, aid, and community college; now, she works to preserve those resources for future students.
Chloe is passionate about workers’ rights, reproductive justice, and incarceration reform. She recalls a radicalizing moment in junior high school when she began fearing gun violence while going to school. That fear drove her to organize her community against state-sanctioned violence. Since then, she has been involved in her community as a community development grant commissioner to make sure her city supports marginalized communities’ financial needs. Chloe served as a student trustee for her community college district, and advocated for policy change on a local and state level through several fellowship programs.
She sees education, employment, housing, and civic participation as essential for long-term stability and equity for justice-impacted individuals. With the fellowship, she hopes to sharpen her advocacy skills, better understand the needs of the justice impacted community, and create an outsized impact.
Chloe aspires to pursue a career in law and policy. In that vein, she will pursue a Juris Degree post graduation. Chloe believes in “Isang Bagsak,” which means “one down” in Filipino, and plans to dedicate her career to uplifting her community.
Yvonne Su
Digital Equity Fellow; Coastline Community College

Yvonne Su (she/her/hers) is a second-year student at Coastline College, where she is studying math and data analytics. Born in Taiwan, Yvonne moved to the U.S. with her family at the age of 10 and grew up in Irvine, California. She earned her Global Studies degree from UCLA, taught in K-12 public schools, then returned to school to transition into data/technology.
Yvonne’s journey as a student leader began at Coastline College, where she serves as treasurer of associated student government. She is passionate about supporting non-traditional students in community college, such as parents, seniors, English learners, and dually enrolled high school students. Yvonne helped the student government build a student-centered budget and revise scholarship criteria to reflect more diverse demographics. Outside of school, she is also interested in AAPI advocacy and civic engagement.
Yvonne has been a beneficiary of digital equity programs and recognizes that many students have the same needs to fill the digital equity gap in their lives. She believes programs like the Affordable Connectivity Program help meet those needs. In the future, Yvonne aspires to build coalitions with schools, government agencies, and organizations who are working on digital equity to amplify the importance and assess the functionality of these programs. Her goal is to work in civic technology, making government services easier to use for everyone. She also hopes to study applied math/computer science in graduate school.
As these four remarkable students begin their fellowships, they bring not only deep personal insight but also a shared commitment to advancing equity in higher education. Their lived experiences and bold ideas will shape meaningful change across California’s public education systems. We’re honored to help them challenge inequities, reimagine what’s possible, and build a more just and inclusive future for all.
About Michelson 20MM
Michelson 20MM is a private, nonprofit foundation working toward equity for underserved and historically underrepresented communities by expanding access to educational and employment opportunities, increasing affordability of educational programs, and ensuring the necessary supports are in place for individuals to thrive. To do so, we work in the following verticals: Digital Equity, Intellectual Property, Smart Justice, Student Basic Needs, and Open Educational Resources (OER). Co-chaired and funded by Alya and Gary Michelson, Michelson 20MM is part of the Michelson Philanthropies network of foundations.