Hunayn Anwar was born and raised in Southeastern Minnesota. She is double majoring in Political Science, with an emphasis in Comparative Politics, and Arabic.
At Cal, she has been heavily involved in leading faith-based and cultural organizations. She served as president of the Association for Muslim Professional Development (AMPD). In this role, she organized workshops to help Muslim students learn skills such as resume writing, interview performance, and personal finance management. She also created mentorship and cohort programs that connected students with professionals to help them in their academic and career pursuits. She also served as president of the Pakistani Students Association (PSA). In this role, she organized a fundraiser with the support of a non-governmental organization to help provide essential supplies to victims of the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan this past summer. In addition, she organized multiple on-campus speaking events involving influential public figures in Pakistan to discuss their careers and current events. Notable examples from past years include Shahid Afridi, a prolific cricketer, and Ayesha Malik, Pakistan’s first female Supreme Court Justice.
Outside of student organizations, she has also served as a member of the Investigations Lab in the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law. In the lab, she helped spearhead projects that ranged from tracking state-backed brutality against protestors to analyzing misinformation spread about COVID-19. This year, she was selected for a fellowship with a United Nations human rights entity. In this role, she utilized her open-source investigation skills to study and document human rights violations in Myanmar.
After graduation, Hunayn intends to continue working as an open-source investigator in the UN as she applies to law school. She is eager to build on these experiences as she pursues her dream of becoming a human rights lawyer and giving a voice to those who have been silenced.