Tanzema Fazal Power Hour 2019 Honoree

Born on International Women’s Day, Tanzema Fazal, age 17, is an activist and a senior in The Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem. Born and raised in Queens, she now resides in Long Island. Tanzema comes from Pakistani roots and actively stands in solidarity young women of color. Coding since she was a freshman, Tanzema now builds her extensive computer coding skills by learning at Google weekly. An intrinsic humanitarian, Tanzema is passionate about women’s rights, assisting the homeless and poverty stricken, and dismantling the institutionalized racism and sexism in America. Tanzema enacts on her passions of civil liberation in every way she can, originating with her joining Step Up as a freshman. Joining Step Up gave her for the first time, access to express her interests and become confident about them, through passionately leading chants at the Women’s March on her 15th birthday and being drawn for a New York Times story, to joining of the NYC Youth Advisory Council of Criminal Justice, and facilitating a youth summit for hundreds of students across NYC at 16. Driven to make concrete changes in her state regarding her passions and as a result of Step Up giving her the motivation and confidence, Tanzema is going to run for and aspires to be mayor of New York.