DU senior Monica Kumar is a member of DU’s Pioneer Leadership Program and has been involved with the All Undergraduate Student Association (AUSA) Senate since her freshman year. Photo: Wayne Armstrong
Senior marketing/finance major Monica Kumar is a rarity among twenty-somethings: she knows the person she is. While many her age struggle with identity, Kumar grasped a foothold years ago.
“She’s more pragmatic than ideological,” says Jo Calhoun, associate provost of Student Life.
Kumar is Hindu and a first-generation American. Her parents—products of an arranged marriage in India—are her inspiration. She loves Dr. Seuss. “He has these truly complex ideas that he just simplifies for children,” Kumar gushes. “Oh, the Places You’ll Go! makes me cry every time I read it.”
If what she’s already accomplished is any indication, Kumar will be going places, too (graduate school and a career in New York City are next on the agenda). Kumar is a member of DU’s Pioneer Leadership Program and has been involved with the All Undergraduate Student Association (AUSA) Senate since her freshman year. “I just kind of consumed it,” she says.
Indeed. Her Senate roles have included terms as a Daniels College of Business senator and president of the DU Programs Board. Now, as president of the undergraduate student body, she’s working on branding a Pioneer identity (“It goes beyond a mascot,” Kumar explains), developing sustainable energy on campus (she and fellow senators are working on a bike sharing program with the city of Denver) and creating a more cohesive campus community.
Perhaps what motivates her most is service to others—beyond the borders of DU or even the nation.
Her family has been volunteering at an Indian heritage camp for 10 years, where she helped to teach identity to adopted Indian children with Anglo parents. Even after visiting India on her own a handful of times, it was her trip there with others who had never seen the country that she says “changed my life.” During a winter DU interterm course — Project Dharamsala — she spent her days teaching English. “I tutored an ex-political prisoner who was only in prison because he supported the Dalai Lama. He will never be able to see his family back in Tibet; it was just heartbreaking,” she says.
If you ask her why she does so much — and so wholeheartedly — Kumar answers without hesitation: “It’s my responsibility to work hard and give back.”