Meet Ria
Who I am
As a lifelong New Yorker, I have always cared deeply about my local community and the role the government can play in shaping people’s everyday lives. That interest is what first drew me toward local politics and public service.
Over the past few years, I’ve worked on campaigns at the city, state, and federal levels, including here in Ithaca with Assemblymember Anna Kelles. I got involved because I wanted to support people I believed would listen to their communities and fight for them.
I’ve also had the chance to work with my community in a more official capacity. This past summer, I worked in State Senator Liz Krueger’s district office, where a lot of the work was very practical: putting together guides to free programs and activities, helping make information easier for constituents to find, researching issues like artificial intelligence and prediction markets, and representing the office at community events. Earlier, at the New York City Department of Records, I created classroom materials from the City’s historical archives that are now being used by public school teachers.
What those experiences taught me is that government works best when people can actually reach it, understand what it is doing, and feel that their concerns are being heard. That is the perspective I brought with me to Ithaca.
Why I want to serve
When I came to Cornell, I wanted to become part of Ithaca, not just attend school here. For the past year, I’ve been involved with the Collegetown Community Collective, a nonprofit that brings together the people who live, work, study, and do business in our neighborhood.
I started by showing up to meetings and listening. Over time, I became more involved, helping with outreach and marketing, working on the summer concert series, and representing the organization before the Industrial Development Agency as part of our effort to secure funding for the collegetown community.
But the most important part has been hearing, week after week, what people in Collegetown are actually concerned about. Longtime residents, businesses, property owners, and students all experience the neighborhood differently, and they do not always agree. But what brings them together is a shared desire to see our community thrive.
This taught me something important about Ward 4. There is rarely one obvious answer, and there is no single group that speaks for everyone. Representing this ward means hearing those different perspectives, doing the work to understand them, and then making decisions you can stand behind.