ANURIMA BHARGAVA

Anurima Bhargava serves as the President of Anthem of Us, which she founded to advise efforts to promote dignity and justice, and to center equity and belonging in workplaces, schools and communities. Anthem of Us emerged from the recognition of how much time we were spending litigating moments of violence, harassment, and hate, and how little time on what leads up to those moments and what comes after them.  Anthem of Us clients currently include foundations, media and arts organizations, civil and immigrant rights organizations, schools and companies.

In December 2018, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Bhargava to serve on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, where she served as Chair and Vice Chair until her term ended in May 2022.  

From 2010-16, Bhargava led federal civil rights enforcement in schools and institutions of higher education at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama administration.  She spearheaded groundbreaking cases and federal policy guidance to address segregation, school discipline, harassment and bullying, and the rights of English learners, students with disabilities, undocumented students and LGBTQ+ students.  She served on several administration-wide and White House task forces to address racial and sexual violence, harassment and discrimination.

Before joining the Justice Department, she directed the education practice at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where she litigated cases on diversity and segregation in schools and institutions of higher education, including in the federal appellate courts and U.S. Supreme Court.

From 2016-2018, she served as a fellow at the Institute of Politics and the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard, and as the inaugural Leadership in Government Fellow at Open Society Foundations, where her work focused on trauma experienced within communities after incidents of racial violence. 

Bhargava is deeply committed to advancing justice through narrative and storytelling.  She advises and produces documentary films and projects and chairs the U.S. Board of Doc Society, a leading incubator and supporter of documentary film globally.  She served as an Executive Producer of Writing With Fire, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2022. Her other projects include The Vow (HBO docuseries); [Untitled] Baltimore Documentary, and she serves as an advisor to the Broadway Advocacy Coalition.  

She co-chairs the National Advisory Board on Public Service at Harvard and has served on the boards of the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund and the Poverty Race Research Action Council.  She is a 2017 Presidential Leadership Scholar and has been a member of the Truman National Security Project and the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Lastly, Bhargava actively engages in and advises numerous political campaigns and was appointed to the 2020 DNC Platform Committee. She founded Take Back Tuesdays and Anthem of America to provide information and ways to take action around elections, and  co-founded a multiracial PAC, American Anthem. 

Ms. Bhargava earned her law degree from Columbia Law School and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College.  She was born and raised on the south side of Chicago and is a graduate of Kenwood Academy.