Mikva Challenge
Leah Brown Schneck serves as the Elections in Action Manager at Mikva Challenge, where initiatives focus on empowering youth for civic engagement. With experience as an independent consultant for the American Business Immigration Coalition, Leah contributed significantly to immigration reform efforts. As Illinois Program Manager for America Needs You, Leah directed staff, raised significant funds, and facilitated career development workshops for first-generation college students. Previous campaign management roles for Felicia Brabec and Christine Morse highlight Leah's ability to lead successful electoral initiatives, with a strong track record of community engagement and volunteer mobilization. Leah's education includes a Bachelor of Arts with Highest Honors from the University of Michigan.
Mikva Challenge
Mikva Challenge develops youth to be informed, empowered, and active citizens and community leaders. We do this by engaging youth in action civics, an authentic and transformative learning process built on youth voice and youth expertise. Core Values: Our values challenge the status quo. Traditional schooling emphasizes adult lectures and students as passive learners. Mikva Challenges adheres to the following core values when implementing our mission: We believe that by providing high quality programming in under-resourced communities and schools, we can eliminate the civic achievement gap. We believe that if youth voice is included in decision-making that policy makers will make more informed decisions. We believe that the best way to learn democracy is to do democracy. We believe action civics is an essential tool to help young people develop the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to be informed, empowered, and active citizens. We believe youth are not apathetic, and that by inviting them into the political process they will become powerful and thoughtful citizens. We believe that Mikva Challenge always needs to be nonpartisan to allow young people to formulate their own opinions and choose the candidates and issues they want to support. Vision: Mikva Challenge envisions a world where: Citizens are informed, empowered, and active Youth voice is valued in decision making Civic leaders reflect the nation’s diversity Action civics is prioritized in education