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Chania Rene-Corail named 2025-2026 fellow for national human rights program
Through the John Lewis Young Leaders (JLYL) program she hopes to offer theater-based civic engagement classes for youth
Citlalli Chávez-Nava
Chania Rene-Corail, a second-year political science and international development studies major, was named a 2025-26 fellow for Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights’ John Lewis Young Leaders program (JLYL), a year-long undergraduate fellowship that prepares college students for a future in community organizing and civic engagement.
Selected among a highly competitive pool of over 550 applicants, Rene-Corail will join 15 other students from public and private universities across the country in this year’s cohort. During the program, fellows engage their campus and local communities in human rights work through a capstone project. They also gain access to comprehensive grassroots organizing workshops, 1:1 mentorship from RFK Human Rights staff, financial support and access to an extensive network of human rights professionals, peers and program alumni.
“This year’s cohort is an extraordinary group of young people, and I’m inspired by their courage, kindness and commitment to making our country a more just and equitable place,” said Kerry Kennedy, president of RFK Human Rights. “I’m filled with hope as we welcome this next generation of leaders into the fold.”
Civic engagement through theater
A believer in the power of using art for political expression, Rene-Corail plans to partner with a local organization to offer theater-based civic engagement workshops for youth for her JLYL capstone project. She hopes to bring the program to youth that have traditionally lacked access to theater and other arts education resources to develop productions that reflect their own lived experiences.
“I want to highlight the issues that are important to the youth — issues that they may have a personal connection with,” she said. “We might even start having discussions about issues that I might not have thought were initially relevant, so this will be an interesting learning experience not only for participants but also for me.”
She hopes participants walk away with both the confidence to use the arts for social action and to also develop practical skills such as scriptwriting, public speaking, set design and other production skills that they can apply to other civic engagement and professional settings in the future.
“My ultimate goal with this project is to create a new generation of creative changemakers, uniting communities and encouraging students to be the best version of themselves, whether that be through improved social emotional learning, heightened educational achievement or unlocking their passion for social engagement,” she added.
A lifelong connection to theater
The daughter of French-Caribbean parents, Rene-Corail grew up near Paris and was introduced to theater when her mother enrolled her in classes at age 2. Although she holds only vague memories of her first performances as a child, the large stage and the size of the audience left an impression on her. Since then, theater has been a recurring part of her life, with Rene-Corail returning to acting and production whenever the opportunity has arisen.
At age 12, Rene-Corail moved to the U.S. when a new job opportunity brought her father to California. The move and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic soon after introduced new challenges and opportunities to her life.
Initially, she doubted her language skills and her ability to perform a full play in English, so she stepped away from theater for a while. But by high school, she picked it up again and began exploring new aspects of theater such as writing and directing.
Now, she’s involved in UCLA’s student-run HOOLIGAN Theater Company, which is focused on revitalizing, educating and enriching the theater community at UCLA and beyond. Last year, she served as assistant director to “Curtains” and the “SpongeBob Musical” as well as dancing in the spring showcase.
Finding her academic home at UCLA
UCLA hadn’t been on top of Rene-Corail’s list when considering her university studies. But after receiving an invitation to attend a Black excellence event for prospective high school seniors, she enjoyed her visit and grew fond of the campus. Soon after, she discovered that she could pursue her academic interests through a double major in political science and international development studies.
“It was exactly what I wanted to study,” said Rene-Corail. “And it was an opportunity to get an amazing education.”
In the political science department, Rene-Corail is taking courses within the race and ethnicity studies concentration. In her classes, she feels inspired by peers who, like her, are looking for careers that advance the broader public good rather than personal success.
Race and Indigeneity Learning Cluster Teaching Fellow, Antwann Michael Simpkins, has been Rene-Corail’s instructor in a number of seminars. He thinks she is a thoughtful, engaged student with vast leadership abilities. In his recent 10-week seminar Rene-Corail led a group project and a related classroom presentation and throughout she was generous with her time, sharing resources and providing guidance to peers who needed additional support.
“Chania is among the top students I have the pleasure of teaching in my many years in education,” said Michael Simpkins. “She is unquestionably a rising scholar who will undoubtedly make meaningful contributions not only to her most immediate context but also the world more broadly.”
As Rene-Corail begins her JLYL fellowship this fall, she hopes her theater-based project will bring the same inspiration she has found at UCLA to empower youth participants to commit to a cause larger than themselves.
“Oftentimes, young people are being told: ‘You’re the future of our society. We’re counting on you to make our world a better place,’ but at the same time, we’re not providing them with the tools to do so. So, my project aims to change that.”
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The lives and policies behind the data
Martha Bailey is breathing history into data. The UCLA economic historian, demographer and labor economist is stitching together the rich tapestry of American life across four generations through her visionary leadership of LIFE‑M, a unique data infrastructure project linking millions of birth, marriage and death records with census information on everything from household size and wages to educational attainment.
The goal? To help researchers across the country better ask and answer big questions about how economic, educational, health-related and environmental circumstances and policies have shaped people’s lives from the cradle to the grave since the dawn of the 20th century.
“The biggest changes in our society and economy don’t play out over a decade,” says Bailey, who also directs the California Center or Population Research at UCLA and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. “They play out over multiple generations as part of ongoing, slow-moving transformations.”
That’s why the datasets of LIFE-M (short for Longitudinal, Intergenerational Family Electronic Micro-database) are so revolutionary. With the help of machine learning, the project compiles reams of intergenerational public information that present a grand survey of life changes — from great-grandparents born at the turn of the century to their grandchildren born in the 1970s.
For instance, Bailey says, LIFE-M data clearly reveal how government investment in education has boosted economic opportunity — from the early 20th century, when public funding of K–12 schools allowed lower-income children to escape the circumstances of their birth, to the later years of the century, when investment in public higher education further encouraged mobility, reducing the role of family privilege.
Similarly, by compiling data over multiple generations in a particular community, the project offers an expansive picture of people’s quality of health and aging. This can be particularly helpful, Bailey says, when scholars are assessing how environmental exposures may contribute to cognitive conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s over time or when they’re tracking the evolution of a cancer cluster in a newly industrialized area.
“Like roads and bridges,” she says, “data infrastructure is foundational for answering fundamental questions about health and social policy.”
LIFE-M, which has been used by hundreds of social scientists, took a decade to set up and was seeded with National Science Foundation funding. Yet just as the project planned to expand its dataset from two states to nine with the help of a National Institute on Aging grant, that funding was frozen. Important research projects have been put on hold, Bailey notes, but it’s the state’s larger educational enterprise that is really in peril.
“The funding and expertise of our researchers spills over into a top-notch education for students, who go onto all types of professions. It’s one big package; research and teaching are deeply interrelated. Losing funds leads to losing the best faculty and best graduate students to other universities and countries, which is a huge loss for California’s public higher education.”
This post was originally published via https://www.ucla.edu/research.
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Learn more about Martha Bailey’s visionary LIFE-M project at UCLA.
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