From Teen Vogue to The Washington Post, Senior Receives National Recognition as a Leader for Her Generation

Anya Dillard’s recent achievements include being named a Gucci Changemaker and interning with Jordan Peele’s MonkeyPaw Productions

When Anya Dillard sees a wrong, she feels compelled to make it right.

That urge has kept the Rutgers University-Newark senior moving at warp speed most of her life.

At age 5, when most Kindergarteners have trouble sharing toys, Dillard was giving them away. For 13 years she ran a holiday gift-giving program for the long-term care pediatric division in the Brooklyn, NY, hospital where her mother worked in media relations.

“Service was an integral part of my upbringing,” said Dillard, 21. “There wasn’t a holiday season that went by without us giving.”

As she grew, so did Dillard’s altruistic endeavors. In high school she founded a nonprofit, The Next Gen Come Up, to encourage her peers to explore activism and pursue community service. She leaned into her love of  storytelling to launch Jenevesque Media LLC, a multimedia production house that strives to amplify global Black and brown voices through experimental narrative and lyrical nonfiction..

When she wasn’t in class or attending to her duties as a teenaged CEO, Dillard was in her element bringing communities together as an organizer. That includes helping her West Orange hometown host both its largest-ever civil rights protest and first-ever Juneteenth celebration, traveling south to assist with the 68th Commemoration Weekend in memory of Emmett Louis Till – whose lynching was a catalyst for the civil rights movement – and registering voters across Florida.  

“I was counted out many times and told you don’t have enough lived experience to have formed political opinions,” she said of her early advocacy work. “I was very adamant about being successful before coming to college to negate that and get others to demand a seat at the table.”

She’s been featured in multiple media outlets, including The Washington Post, CNN, Red Table Talk, Elle, Seventeen, and Glamour magazines, honored as a part of McDonald’s Future 22 and Ulta Beauty’s Muse 100 and Teen Vogue's 21 Under 21, and received dozens of social justice and community engagement awards including the Conversationalist Human Rights Award, and the 2021 New Jersey Association of Student Councils’ Student Leader of the Year Award.

When it came to choosing a college, not surprisingly, Dillard was flush with options, including Spelman, Syracuse and Temple University. But at Rutgers-Newark’s Honors Living-Learning Community, she saw an opportunity to nurture her talents while remaining true to her activism and her roots.

“I chose Rutgers-Newark specifically because it has such a rich history that is tied to social justice work for Black and brown people, and because it was  an incubator space that would allow me to fully dive into all the special niches associated with being a service leader while being surrounded by people who want to do revolutionary things,” said Dillard, 21, who is earning a double major in journalism and video production with double minors in political science and social justice.

But once she arrived on campus, Dillard faced an unfamiliar feeling: burnout.

Always a socially conscious citizen, she had prided herself on staying fully informed and activated. But coming of age in the wake of a global pandemic, social and political upheaval had left her wrung out.

“Before my goal was to be invincible and unstoppable. Do everything, and do it now as a young person,” said Dillard. “At this point, my goal is shifting to prioritize wellness, to put my best foot forward and be the storyteller I need to be in the moment so I can effectively motivate and educate my community.”

She needed to recharge and hone her craft. She said her four years at Rutgers-Newark allowed her to do just that.

Initially, she had trouble trusting where her art could take her but said mentor Dean Timothy Eatman offered reassurance.

“I don’t use this word frequently, but omnicompetent comes to mind when describing Anya,” said Eatman. “She is so intellectually curious and hungry to be an ameliorating agent around equity. She is just so real.  She can do whatever she wants to do.”

Now in his ninth year leading HLLC, Eatman said the program modeled after HBCU campus ethos supports students like Dillard achieve their goals by prioritizing strong faculty and student connections.

“When students feel like they can connect, they can make a difference,” said Eatman.

By junior year, she’d found her stride studying with faculty “who have blown my mind at least twice a semester.” And creating short films that explore gender nuance and the intricacies of Black patriotism and Black migration alongside her peers at Express Newark gave her the confidence to apply for internships with some of the top production companies in the country. That includes Jordan Peele’s MonkeyPaw Productions, where she landed a job as a Culture and Impact intern and became one of the 80 coveted fellows whose relocation to Los Angeles was sponsored by The Academy of Motion Pictures Gold Rising Fellowship. In total, the program boasts over 7,000 applicants a year. Dillard spent last summer in Los Angeles working with the Academy Award-winning screenwriter team and revered director’s team.

“I learned how to take my storytelling one step further,” she said. “For so long, it’s been a a white-dominated industry. So, it was refreshing to have that opportunity to study the intricacies of the film industry with a Black-run production team and figure out what areas I want to specialize in.”

At the moment, lyrical documentaries are her focus. She is producing two short films, including a documentary about BrownMill Company, a clothing company founded by three Black men, and its impact on Newark’s fashion industry. The project, expected to be completed next year, dovetails with Dillard’s latest accolade: being named one of 12 Gucci Changemakers. The Changemakers North America Scholarship Program financed her last year at Rutgers-Newark and aims “to further Gucci’s commitment to nurturing talent and promoting creativity within their communities.”

After graduating in May, Dillard is looking forward to continuing work on her BrownMill project during a gap year before applying to graduate school to further her film studies, where she plans to concentrate on directing or producing.

But she will be forever grateful for her time of growth at Rutgers-Newark.

“You can do revolutionary work in absolutely any industry,” she said. “It meant a lot to me to be in a space that allowed me to really lean into that mission.”