Tova Ricardo is a San Francisco Bay Area native and a senior at Columbia University, studying English and Sociology. She is an active leader in Columbia/Barnard Hillel, serving as the Co-President of JOCaucus, Hillel’s Jews of Color Initiative and Kesher, the Reform Jewish community. Ricardo is also an award-winning writer and spoken word artist, having served as the 2015 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate and is a recipient of the American Jewish Press Association’s Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Personal Essay. Currently, she is the Communications Intern for the Berkeley-based Jews of Color Initiative (formerly known as Jews of Color Field Building Initiative), and is a member of the UJA-Federation of New York’s Race, Equity, and Inclusion Lay Advisory Committee.