Anita is the President of the Collective for Youth Empowerment in STEM & Society (CYESS), an initiative of the Afterschool Alliance where she also serves as a Senior Vice President for STEM & Youth Engagement. CYESS aims to support afterschool programs to more actively engage young people in defining and advocating for STEM-based solutions to problems that impact their communities.
Prior to this role, Anita most recently served as the Head of Education and Learning at the Wellcome Trust, a global health philanthropy based in London. Her previous roles include being Vice President for STEM Policy at the Afterschool Alliance, Program Manager at NASA Headquarters, Lead for Education and Public Outreach in the Astrophysics Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, and the John Bahcall Public Policy Fellow at the American Astronomical Society. Anita has a PhD in astrophysics and serves on the Boards of the National Girls Collaborative Project and STEM Education Coalition in the United States and Nobel Prize Outreach in Sweden.