The most foundational aspect of all the work I do today is a result of my experiences with community-based activism. I first became involved with grassroots organizing at age 18 while campaigning for Mayor Farrah Khan's Irvine city council campaign in 2015. When the outcome of the 2016 US election left me distrusting of politics, I decided to work closely with more community-centered, mutual aid social justice spaces. Within UC Irvine, I co-founded our South Asian Student Union (SASU) to discuss our unique subjectivities and create philanthropic opportunities for our student body. We held “Chai Nights” to discuss themes such as: “Diversity and Representation;” “South Asian Feminisms;” “Mental Health;” “LGBTQIA+;” “Interpersonal Violence”; “Decolonization”; “Shadeism and Anti-Blackness.” I facilitated the latter with a lecture and moderated conversation with Professor Frank Wilderson. In 2017, I worked with fellow student leaders to address food and housing insecurity by establishing UCI's FRESH Basic Needs Hub. At FRESH, I directly worked in the operation of our food pantry, organization of food and housing justice-related programming, and outreach and marketing. I proceeded to work at FRESH until April 2020, so I had experience working there as an undergraduate student, graduate student, and post-graduate full-time employee. Through both SASU and FRESH, I established my own sense of community and collaborated with student activists from like-minded organizations such as: Students for Justice in Palestine at UCI, for whom I created a logo and presented a workshop titled "Colonialism and Memory;" UCI's DREAM Center, the resource center for students who are Undocumented; and UCI's Cross-Cultural Center.