YWA
YWA was founded by Rizina Yadav.
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Rizina grew up in Singleton, Maitland, and Newcastle, NSW, attending Singleton Public School, Rutherford Public School, and Merewether High School.
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She developed an understanding of injustice and justice, and a sense that an egalitarian Australia could only materialise through the work of committed citizens.
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Influenced by Bertrand Russell and moral philosophy, Rizina concluded that a meaningful and examined life - the kind lived by those she admired - was synonymous with contributing to a better Australia.
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"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.” (Bertrand Russell)​
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Rizina attained her Bachelors degree from Stanford University. During summers she completed impact-centered work in Palo Alto, Montreal, London, Berlin, Dubbo, and Sydney, and like any real Stanford student launched and abandoned 2.5 startups.
Her summers involved applying behavioural science to increase school attendance, examining political corruption in Colombia, helping craft institutional policy for the design of a public policy think tank, and researching global gender mainstreaming.
She graduated with a perfect GPA, excellence commendations, and an Excellence Award. She loved her time at Stanford, meeting some of her best friends and doing at least 200 cardio dance classes.​
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Now, Rizina is at Oxford and Cambridge, pursuing further education in Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation, and Multidisciplinary Gender Studies.
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These will directly contribute to YWA's vision - a better Australia for women through effective policies and programs.
Our Story
Since its founding, YWA has steadily grown to a team of 17 young women.
The team consists of designers, data scientists, victim-survivors, lawyers, policy analysts, psychologists, doctors.
The team is passionate, intelligent young women from each Australian state and territory.
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These 17 young women have varying responsibilities: researching policy and government frameworks, crafting presentation decks, analysing and visualising data, brainstorming solutions to gender issues, mapping vulnerabilities in the gender sector, and ideating technology tools to address resource inefficiencies.
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If you would like to join us, please 'Contact Us' on the Home Page. We are looking for people - women, men, gender diverse - from all backgrounds. We believe in meaningful work that pushes boundaries; we also believe in building a generous community and having fun while we do it.
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While growing our core team, we have also grown our academics and partners. We now collaborate with academics from 8 Australian universities and 3 overseas universities, and have 15+ partners.
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