Anurima Bhargava is the Founder and Director of Anthem of Us, a strategic advisory and consulting firm that promotes dignity and justice, and centers equity and belonging, in workplaces, schools, and communities. Anthem of Us works in collective with multiple partners to advise foundations, media and arts organizations, civil and human rights organizations, schools and companies.
Bhargava chaired and continues to serve on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. She was appointed to the Commission in December 2018 by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and has traveled to Burma, the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, Iraq, Sudan, and Vietnam to document and monitor religious conditions.
Bhargava led federal civil rights enforcement and policy in schools and institutions of higher education at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama administration. She served on several administration-wide and White House task forces to address racial and sexual violence, diversity, discipline, harassment and discrimination.
Before joining the Justice Department, she directed the education practice at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where she litigated cases on diversity, equity and segregation in schools and institutions of higher education, including in the federal appellate courts and U.S. Supreme Court.
From 2016-2018, she served as a fellow at the Institute of Politics and the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard, and as the inaugural Leadership in Government Fellow at Open Society Foundations, where her work focused on trauma experienced within communities after incidents of racial violence.
Bhargava is deeply committed to advancing justice through narrative and storytelling. She advises and produces documentary films and projects, and chairs the U.S. Board of Doc Society, a leading incubator and supporter of documentary film globally.
Bhargava serves as an advisor to Unbound Philantropy, Whiteboard and the Broadway Advocacy Coalition. She co-chairs the National Advisory Board on Public Service at Harvard and serves on the boards of the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund and Poverty Race Research Action Council. She is a 2017 Presidential Leadership Scholar and has been a member of the Truman National Security Project and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Lastly, Bhargava advises numerous political campaigns and was appointed to the 2020 DNC Platform Committee. She founded Take Back Tuesdays and Anthem of America to provide information and ways to take action around elections, and recently co-founded a multiracial PAC, American Anthem.
Ms. Bhargava earned her law degree from Columbia Law School and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College. She was born and raised on the south side of Chicago.
