- DHRC Museum of Memory and Human Rights Fellowship, Santiago, Chile
- Fair Labor Association Fellowship
- Human Rights and Environmental Justice in Edéa Cameroon Internship
- Ian Fishback Human Rights Fellowship
- International Human Rights Fellowship
- Robert J. Donia Graduate Student Fellowship
- Social Change Initiative Fellowship
- Student-Initiated Summer Internship Fellowship
- Syria Justice and Accountability Centre Fellowship
- Fellowship for Research to Advance Global Health & Human Rights
Mahek Verma
Major: Economics and Political Science
Class: 2028
“Throughout the summer, I worked on a number of projects that advanced my interests in the apparel industry and labor rights. I was part of two teams, the Gender team and the Fair Compensation team.
Within the Gender team, I worked on two projects: updating the Gender Equity Research Guide and creating a training on Gender-Based Violence and Harassment (GBVH). The former consisted of researching regulations, indices, and standards on gender equity that were recently published or changed, and summarizing them in a list so that FLA member companies remain up to date on the latest information in the subject. The biggest updates in the legal sphere were from the EU, UK, and Bangladesh. In Bangladesh specifically, sexual harassment was defined for the first time legally through the Labour Amendment Act. This taught me how to track primary legal sources directly, such as government gazettes, official legislative text, and international bodies like the ILO, rather than relying on secondary summaries, so that the information I compiled for member companies was accurate and current….
Overall, this internship taught me how to move between research, data analysis, public-facing content creation, and policy writing while keeping the same throughline: turning complex information into something member companies could actually act on. I came away with stronger technical skills in R and data analysis, a better sense of how to communicate findings to different audiences, and a deeper understanding of the labor rights issues facing the apparel industry today. This internship also advanced my career goal of pursuing a PhD in economics, specifically focusing on trade within the apparel industry, by giving me direct, hands-on exposure to the exact data and questions that field is built on. Working across both the Gender team and FC team let me see, from the inside, how labor standards, wages, and trade relationships function within global apparel supply chains.”
