Anika may have just been honored with the National DEI Change Maker Award* in 2021, but she has been a Change Maker for her entire career. It’s a goal she set for herself early on.

When her oldest son was diagnosed with leukemia, her life was changed forever.

“From the time that he was diagnosed to the time he passed away, it was only seven months. It was hard and fast and I felt like everything was so expedited,” Anika said. “But I had a lot of growth in that time; our relationship grew leaps and bounds.”

Prior to joining Make-A-Wish, Anika was a social worker at the City of New York Child Welfare Academy, writing curriculum and overseeing policy. When she returned to work after her loss, Anika realized that she wanted to focus her efforts on children and families that had been impacted by illness.

“Going through the journey I went through, it gave me this kind of insight, where I felt like I could help somebody else in in a different kind of way,” Anika said.

Her role as Vice President of Mission Delivery at Make-A-Wish has given her the opportunity to expand the audience she’s working with and increase the impact she can have. As part of her efforts, she helped establish Community Councils within Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island to help meet kids where THEY are. Historically, volunteer numbers in those boroughs were low, meaning kids would have long wait periods before their wish could come true. With the help of these Councils, kids in these areas are being served faster, and by volunteers who are as diverse as they are – who look like them and speak their language.

Over the past few years, Anika has also been part of change on a national level, working as a “leader amongst leaders” on the Make-A-Wish America DEI Council. The Council is committed to championing diversity, equity and inclusion at a national level, fostering an organization that is accessible and welcoming. In turn, helping us unite communities to help make more wishes possible. They work to understand where we are currently as an organization in granting wishes to Black and brown children and in our reach across communities, to ensure our hiring and pay practices are equitable across all applicants and potential hires, and colleagues, and to press to build representation across National & Chapter Boards.

She sees this work as a necessary step in the right direction, that the more vocal support of the organization both nationally and locally in recent years is a promising change. “We've really got to do something to stand on the side of right, and to voice what we think the right side is,” she said. “I see growth in the right direction. And for me, being awarded the DEI Change Maker Award says to me – that I’m going in the right direction, and that we’re all moving in the right direction.”

It’s been gratifying, she says, to watch her impact grow – starting in her community and spreading throughout the entire organization and the entire country. It parallels the wish journey even, explaining that we plant a wish in the middle of a child’s circumstances, everything that’s going on around them, and then comes a ripple effect that reaches not just the wish child, but their family, their community, everything that surrounds them.

“I want to reach as many people as possible, so the notion that we’ve gone from my individual community and that it’s reverberating and having an impact, that’s exactly the kind of legacy I want to create,” Anika said.

When asked how it felt to receive the award for her efforts, Anika simply calls it “an honor and a responsibility.” She takes it not only as a reinforcement of the hard work she’s done so far, but as a challenge and call to action to continue. “I wear it as a badge of honor,” she says. “But Change Maker doesn’t mean just a finite amount of time – it means until we get to the change we want to see.”

Some of this drive, this passion, stems from her childhood and the experiences of her family.

Anika’s parents grew up in the South, went to segregated schools and lived under Jim Crow laws, something she feels gives her a unique insight into the Black experience in America. Although one of her grandmother’s main concerns for her father was the fear of him being lynched when he was going out, both of Anika’s parents graduated from college.

She went to school in Howard Beach, Queens, where she was often the only Black girl in her class. She and her brother had rocks thrown against their bus on the way to school, she’d be called by racial slurs, and her school friends would distance themselves when they’d go out to lunch.

“Those things had a big impact on me, defined how society saw me,” Anika said. “If I can prevent having one more person from having those experiences, then I feel like I succeeded.”

She brings this drive to her work, bringing the dedication and the tenacity to better the lives of the children we serve. She sees her own children within them, they represent them.

“Being the mother of two Black boys, I always wanted to see a society that was more welcoming to them than it was to me. I want to see each generation get better,” she said. “If I can lay down my head at night and wake up in the morning without fear that someone may do harm to my children because of the color of their skin – that's what I’m striving for, a society that’s better for them.”

It's one of the many reasons she has redoubled the efforts to make sure that not only do we grant wishes to EVERY eligible child, but we grant those children’s wishes equitably.

She is without a doubt, the very definition of a #StrongWoman of Make-A-Wish, and one we are so happy to call a part of our family.

*Anika was honored with the first Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award by Make-A-Wish America. The award honors someone who is committed to advancing and promoting DEI within their organization and community. "She exemplifies the way we should act and treat others – with dignity and respect, and an openness to learning and growing. She’s been a champion of DEI at the chapter for years. She is a leader in ensuring that her chapter’s wishes are fair relative to all the opportunities being offered to every child, no matter the neighborhood they live in or the family’s socioeconomic status."