Jenifer Rajkumar tops City&State Magazine’s list of Above & Beyond women

Indian American Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar, the first South Asian woman elected to state office in New York is the featured honoree and the only elected official on City&State Magazine’s 2024 Above & Beyond list.

Joining Rajkumar in this year’s list “recognizing an amazing group of leading women taking center stage in New York” is Neela Lockel,

CEO of the EAC Network, a nonprofit human services organization.

“They’re Manhattan natives, Midwestern transplants, lifelong upstaters and immigrants,” the magazine stated. “What all of this year’s Above & Beyond: Women honorees have in common is a passion for improving New York, the place they now call home.”

READ: Jenifer Rajkumar launches Holi tour across New York (March 22, 2024)

“They are also role models for the next generation of politicians, nonprofit leaders, attorneys and cultural influencers,” it said.

Jenifer Rajkumar, New York Assembly Member

Rajkumar’s mother grew up in a mud hut in India, and her parents immigrated with $300 and a suitcase, the magazine noted in her profile.

“So becoming the first South Asian woman elected to state office in New York – she has served in the Assembly since 2021 – was a victory not only for Rajkumar, but for her parents and New York’s burgeoning Asian community.”

“I represent the district in south Queens where my family started in America,” she says, “the launching pad for so many South Asian immigrant families like mine.”

READ: READ: Jenifer Rajkumar moves to address New York’s migrant influx (September 7, 2023)

Mindful of her responsibility, Rajkumar led a successful effort to make Diwali a state school holiday and to establish New York’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Commission. She also sponsored a measure incorporating domestic workers – who are overwhelmingly immigrants of color – into the state’s human rights law.

A politician since middle school, Rajkumar got her start leading a voting rights campaign to enfranchise fifth-graders. When she got her driver’s license at 17, she drove straight to Hillary Clinton’s US Senate campaign office to volunteer.

Later, as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Rajkumar led a campus women’s group and tutored low-income Philadelphia women.

Believing that “lawyers save the world,” she earned a degree from Stanford Law School – then won her first case as an attorney, a workplace discrimination suit on behalf of 5,000 women. “I realized that to really make a difference, you need power,” Rajkumar says. “So I went into politics.”

READ: Jenifer Rajkumar distributes school supplies in South Queens (September 6, 2023)

Her first role was as a lower Manhattan district leader. After three terms, Rajkumar expanded her sphere of influence as then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s state director of immigrant affairs, spearheading a first-in-the-nation, $31 million public-private partnership to provide immigrants with legal defense.

Now settled back into her home borough, Rajkumar has taught political science to the next generation at Lehman College. She was also a senior adviser for the transition team of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who remains an influential ally.

On weekends, she runs the length of her district, from Glendale to Richmond Hill, stopping only for Indian tea.

Running is a rare escape from the political grind for Rajkumar. After all, this is the woman who secured her first district seat by defeating a three-decade incumbent with 70% of the vote – and then, in 2020, won her Assembly race with record district turnout.

READ: Jenifer Rajkumar pushes for Diwali holiday in New York (January 27, 2023)

“I started by standing on my street corner, greeting my neighbors one by one,” she says. “In my heart, I’ll always be a scrappy, insurgent upstart.”

Neela Lockel, President and CEO, EAC Network

Working at a homeless shelter during college, Neela Lockel had an “aha” moment: “I realized that was the kind of work I’d always been attracted to – working with vulnerable individuals.”

Her parents took more convincing, according to City&State. “I’m the daughter of Indian immigrants!” Lockel says. “So when I went from going to law school to going to social work school, they were like, ‘What?’”

But Lockel persisted in advocacy that was, as she puts it, “hyperlocal and rooted in communities.” She’s done that ever since – and now she’s CEO of the EAC Network, a nonprofit human services organization reaching 60,000 people across New York City, Rockland County and Long Island.

Inclusion is a priority: At EAC, Lockel has dramatically increased diversity on the organization’s board. The organization focuses on seniors and nutrition, children and youth, families and communities, vocational services and criminal justice and behavioral health.

Lockel has a long history of working with vulnerable populations with critical needs and serving as a voice for those who are often unheard or unseen. She counts her experiences on the ground during major disasters as among her proudest moments as a social worker.

As CEO of the American Red Cross of Greater New York’s Long Island chapter, she assisted after devastating hurricanes and floods in the Carolinas and wildfires in California.

“I’m in a community of people who love this work and share a vision,” Lockel says. “I have seen and felt the impact of what we’re able to do as part of these systems that move people forward.”