Jan 15, 2025
Arlington, VA – NAMI is proud to announce the newest class of ten young adult leaders chosen to participate in the 2025 NAMI Next Gen initiative. These young adults showcase diverse experiences, passion for creating positive change, and commitment to mental health advocacy.
As part of NAMI’s continued dedication to supporting youth mental health, the NAMI Next Gen young adult advisory group brings together young adults, elevating their voices and lived experiences. Since 2021, NAMI Next Gen advisors highlight one of NAMI’s guiding principles, “Nothing About Us Without Us.” Each year, NAMI Next Gen helps advise, create, and innovate how NAMI serves young people.
NAMI invites you to join us in celebrating the NAMI Next Gen Class of 2025:
- Srihitha Dasari (she/her) is a passionate 20-year-old health equity advocate from Georgia, studying Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Anthropology at MIT. Her advocacy extends to the United Nations and U.S. Congress, where she champions youth perspectives, health equity, and mental health funding.
- Nadiyah Fisher (she/her) is a 24-year-old visionary from Middletown, DE, residing in Philadelphia while applying to medical school to become a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. Nadiyah’s work aims to destigmatize mental illness and disrupt the cycle of untreated youth mental health leading to incarceration, particularly within the Black community.
- Anuj Gandhi (he/him) is a dynamic 23-year-old hailing from Bartlett, IL, currently applying for his PhD in Clinical/Counseling Psychology. His journey is rooted in a commitment to create safe spaces for dialogue and collective healing, along with developing community-level interventions that possess high cultural humility and focus on peer support, education, and complementary practices.
- Dylan Humphrey (he/him) is a passionate storyteller and advocate in his sophomore year at Emerson College as the Norman Lear Scholar. Dylan is committed to empowering youth and dismantling stigmas surrounding mental health, particularly within communities of color.
- Caitlyn Jennings (she/her) is a 23-year-old hailing from Potomac, MD, with a degree in History from the University of Maryland Global Campus. Caitlyn is dedicated to ensuring mental health parity in her advocacy work.
- Issac Lara (he/him) is a youth well-being activist, lived experience researcher, and peer support advocate on a mission to create a happier, healthier global community. As a NAMI Next Gen Advisor, Isaac is leveraging his peer support and global mental health expertise to advance youth peer support training and services nationwide through program development and legislative efforts.
- Isabel Ohakamma (she/her) is a proud Nigerian-American mental health advocate from Houston, Texas. Isabel’s passion for mental health advocacy ignited when she founded a high school campus club dedicated to addressing the mental and emotional needs of students from underrepresented communities while challenging cultural stigmas surrounding mental health, leading to her selection as one of twelve 2021 Bezos Scholars in the country.
- Areli Rosales (she/her) is a 21-year-old Latina from El Paso, Texas, and a proud first-generation graduate from the University of Texas at San Antonio with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. Having navigated cultural stigma and the generational cycles that view mental health struggles as character flaws, she is passionate about breaking down these barriers.
- Grace Wankelman (she/her) is a Northern Colorado native who is now based in Washington, D.C., where she works in gun violence prevention. She’s committed to fostering open conversations and breaking down mental health stigma, particularly in rural communities.
- Jazmine Wildcat (she/her) is a 21-year-old enrolled member of the Northern Arapaho tribe from the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Jazmine is particularly dedicated to educating others about intergenerational trauma and promoting alternative coping mechanisms like traditional practices, volunteering, and activism.
The mission of NAMI Next Gen is to bring together the diverse experiences of youth and young adults to help address the mental health concerns of their peers and communities through increased awareness, educational resources, and services. NAMI looks forward to working with this new cohort of young leaders to address the youth mental health crisis in our country.
In our efforts to support youth mental health, NAMI also offers the NAMI Teen & Young Adult (T&YA) HelpLine, a free nationwide peer-support service staffed by trained young adult specialists that understand what young people are going through because they have personal experience. They’re available to provide support, information, and resource referrals to teens and young adults. They care and want to help you find a way forward. You can reach the T&YA HelpLine by texting “Friend” to 62640, click here to chat or call 1-800-950-NAMI (6264).
