I met Amanda Nguyen in January 2017, two and a half years after a sexual assault that nearly claimed my life. Meeting her was the first time — in the dark months that had followed— where I felt like things would get better. She has that way about her; a way of pulling back the clouds, of convincing you that the status quo not only can change, but WILL. I’d been told by so many people — parents, friends, law enforcement — that sexual assault survivors needed to simply get over their assault and keep going. That the system wasn't built to give us justice and that lawmakers were too busy to care. Amanda shattered that notion in two sentences: “We just passed a federal bill that protects the rights of Sexual Assault Survivors. We passed it unanimously.” I remember my eyes filling with tears in the minutes afterward. Here was someone who not only believed  change was possible — but was proving it. With her guidance, and the hard work of activists nationwide, Rise has worked to pass 30 laws, including two in my own state of New York. I testified at the Capitol in Albany to help secure one of them. While standing in front of lawmakers to tell my story, I felt my hands trembling in fear. So I reflected back to that moment of meeting Amanda, to that feeling of hope she instantly gave me, and it helped carry me through. Hope alone is powerful, but when people like Amanda Nguyen turn it into action, they quite literally change the world.

There are many leaders and organizations that do things for vulnerable populations; they enact policies for us, champion causes and solutions for us, tell our stories for us It’s very admirable work. But that’s not what Rise does. Rise understands that it’s the very people that these policies, solutions, and organizations are championing, that need to lead the change. Rise empowers us to change our own fates instead of doing it for us. After being raped in 2012, I tried to navigate a complex criminal justice system to seek answers on what my options were for pursuing justice. Like countless survivors who decided to report, I encountered a broken system that did not take rape victims seriously. And like most survivors, I never found closure or institutional justice for my rape. Rise was the first experience where I felt like I was able to regain control over my own narrative. With Rise, there is hope. With Amanda, there is hope. Rise has restored my faith in our legislative process and our democracy. Rose did not speak for me. They handed me the mic.

On Valentine’s Day 2018, a tragedy struck a small town in Parkland, Florida when a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killing 17 students and faculty members. Following the shooting, student survivors and activists made public pleas to their local, state and federal representatives to reform gun policies. When legislators refused to change their stance on gun legislation for fear of losing their seats, a group of survivors contacted Rise to learn a new way of lawmaking: Hopeanomics.

My life changed with an alert from my phone on a bus going back to campus. It was from the New York Times but it contained the name of my home town. It read: "mass shooting at high school in Broward County". I’ll never forget what I felt then - an immediate hit of fear in my gut that stayed with me for weeks and has never left my memory. Was my brother alive? I was scared that he was killed. No one should have to ever feel this. No student deserves to go to class in the morning thinking it's a normal school day and then have the day end in sirens and gunshots. That’s when I decided to be an activist. I have since taken leave from my engineering degree to make the world a better place at Rise. Now, I advocate full time to help survivors of all issues feel like they have a place in our democracy. I want to make sure no one experiences the feeling I had that day on the bus but rather the feeling I have waking up everyday at Rise - that there is light at the end of a dark tunnel.