63 Magazine - Issue 4

Organizer Spotlight:
Ariba Qureshi
In addition to every electoral organizer
working across the country this cycle, there
are many organizers like Ariba Qureshi who
work all year round (for years on end) for
causes they care about. For Ariba, that cause
is access to quality education.
Growing up as a child of immigrants, Ariba’s
parents worked consistently to ensure she
was receiving the best education possible.
When just out of college and organizing for
the 2014 Nashville mayoral election, Ariba
saw the vast disparity that existed between
schools across Davidson County. It was
this disparity—only 16% of K-12 students
in Nashville are enrolled in a high-quality
school—that led to the creation of Project
Renaissance and its parent-led coalition
Nashville Rise.
Project Renaissance works to provide all
Nashville children with the high-quality
education they deserve by empowering and
engaging families, advocating for supportive
policy, recruiting effective educators, and
supporting, growing, and creating great
schools. As part of this work, Nashville Rise
works to inform parents about the Davidson
County school system and how together as
parents, they can work to better their school
system. As an organizer for Nashville Rise,
Ariba works to recruit, empower, and engage
parents to advocate for their children’s
education.
“Getting the chance to meet parents and
community members across the county
has given me an enormous amount of
motivation for the work that we’re doing.
Not only because I get to hear each
individual’s personal story but I’m also
able to bear witness to a passion: parents
wanting to improve education across the
board no matter what situation that person
may be in.”