Meet the team: Akhila Kolisetty
Ahkila is a New York based attorney with vast experience situated in human rights having worked with Human Rights Watch, The Open Society Foundations, and The Harvard International Human Rights Clinic. She is passionate about access to justice, legal empowerment, and women’s rights and works with SAHR as a legal advisor and researcher.
1. What change would you like to see in the way human rights lawyering is done?
I would like to see a world in which lawyers and advocates from affected and marginalized communities are supported, lifted up, and given the platform and opportunities to conduct human rights advocacy in a way that is meaningful and effective for their own context. We all need to be learning together and from one another, rather than in the silos we are currently in. I’d also like to see lawyers working more closely in conjunction with social movements and organizers working at the grassroots level to foster bottom-up change. We need to work together more effectively and in a more coordinated and targeted manner, and lawyers need to continue to learn from and incorporate social movement tactics into their work. I also would like funding and strategy to be increasingly directed by communities of color and oppressed groups themselves, who know what they need in terms of justice and are often extremely creative and effective when it comes to tactics. Yet, we still see the majority of funding controlled by well-resourced groups in the West, utilizing outcomes that need to be measured in often archaic ways that do not truly capture how social change happens. These power dynamics need to be addressed and shaken up.
2. What book are you currently reading? and what do you recommend to our followers?
This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins, which explores the unique challenges of being both Black and female in America, from a feminist and personal perspective. A few other recent thought-provoking reads I’d recommend include Hunger by Roxane Gay, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, and My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem. I try my best to fill my (virtual) bookshelf with books written by women and people of color!
3. What gives you joy outside of work and why is this important to your self-care?
When it comes to self-care, I prioritize balance and taking the time out to do things for myself — whether it’s eating healthy and staying active, or reading and writing to gain new insights into the world we navigate every day. I absolutely love working out and I try to get to the gym several times a week. I recently discovered the joy of strength training and lifting weights, and it’s been amazing to see and feel my body get stronger over time! It’s an empowering feeling to feel strong and able in the gym, particularly as a woman, and I think physical activity is a fantastic outlet for the energy, frustration and sadness that we often encounter in our work as activists. I also love creative writing and poetry, and have been working on narrating vignettes from my time working in the human rights and women’s rights field. Journaling and writing about these experiences from a creative standpoint has been crucial to self-care. Reflecting on the work we are doing can help us process the difficult emotions we experience on this journey, and help make sense of the complex world we live in.
4. What actions are you taking right now that you consider to be feminist / revolutionary / change-making?
I certainly consider myself a feminist, and would, of course, aspire to someday be a revolutionary! Personally, I’ve been taking steps to develop my skills so that I can be a stronger, more passionate — and compassionate — advocate in and out of court as I advocate for my clients, who are primarily survivors of domestic violence. I’m also constantly making efforts to learn more about the way gender violence is evolving, particularly in the area of non-consensual porn and cyber sexual abuse, and to grapple with the challenges in the field through a more nuanced, thoughtful approach. I think that doing this work, as a South Asian woman, can itself be revolutionary, and I hope that more young men and women from our communities choose to challenge norms and talk about gender violence publicly.
