2024-25 Christina Adane
We are delighted to share that our innovator in residence for 2024-25 is Christina Adane, a successful changemaker, based in London, working to eradicate hunger for children in the UK.
Christina is familiar to ASL students; she gave the keynote address at our Human Rights Symposium, and was a guest speaker at youngPower. As innovator, she will engage with our community during the first semester of 2024-25. Christina’s work reflects our ASL core values, and our innovator will examine these traits with our students, while exploring the challenges of bringing about effective change.
Christina started her journey at Bite Back, where she was co-chair of a youth-led movement fighting for a fairer food system in the UK. She is most known for starting the campaign to extend free school meal provisions during lockdown—an endeavor later spearheaded by footballer Marcus Rashford—as well as other campaigns around junk food marketing and food equity issues.
Her international efforts include delivering food systems workshops in Thailand to youth from South-East Asia/Pacific countries and working with NGOs and local communities to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Tigray.
Chritsina’s work has been recognized by the BBC who named her one of the top 100 women of the world in 2020. In 2021, she won the Diana Legacy Award for her efforts in fighting for a fairer food system. Christina was also a finalist for the International Peace Prize in 2021 and appeared on the list for Politico’s Power 40 in 2023.
Christina writes, “As the first generation to grow up in the digital age, young people are bombarded with issues going on around the world from a very young age. Without being equipped with the tools to process or act on the information, a lot of us struggle to converse or inspire change around these issues. My overarching aim with this project is to build this toolbox for young people, bringing students on a journey of reframing what changemaking looks like in our cultural and political context. I want to show young people that they can create impact beyond just a repost or tweet, through various mediums that don’t have to subscribe to the traditional route of activism. I will draw on my experience in campaigning, working with industry and policymakers, systems thinking, photography, editorials, and youth culture to make this case.”
Working with our community
During her time at ASL, Christina will work with the community in three ways:
- Keynotes and sessions connected to advisory through the lens of dialogue across difference
- Workshops for high school councils and clubs on language and frameworks for social change, including guest speakers and off-site learning engagements
- Collaboration with teachers to connect to the classroom curriculum.