Alumni Spotlight: Jana Rumminger
Former Fellow Fights for Human Rights in Asia
By Julie Saksa, PP55 Intern
“I currently live in Singapore and am now working with several organizations in South and Southeast Asia on issues of women’s rights, primarily on reform of Muslim family laws and the implementation of CEDAW (the UN “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women”) at the national level.” This is how former Fellow Jana Robinson ’97 describes her work right now.
At Princeton, Jana Rumminger made a name for herself as an English major, focusing her independent work in African American and South African literature. During her junior year, Jana took advantage of an opportunity to spend a spring/summer term abroad at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. During this “turning point in my Princeton experience,” Jana began to re-orient herself toward public service and issues of justice.
Jana became a PP55 Fellow at Leake & Watts Services in Yonkers, NY. Other fellowships took her to a food bank in Texas and to policy-related work in Washington, D.C.
In 2004 Jana graduated from Northeastern University School of Law with a law degree and a master’s degree in Law, Policy and Society.
Jana Rumminger '97, with a child from the Child Care Centre of the organization she worked with during her year as a Luce Scholar in Malaysia.
Looking back on her Princeton Project 55 fellowship at a Residential Treatment Center (Leake & Watts) for troubled and abused teenage foster kids, Jana is grateful for “the opportunity to merge the theory I had learned at Princeton with real-life experience.”
Jana’s fellowship experience led her to other fellowships and ultimately to a law school and the human rights work she currently does in Malaysia. Her advice for future or current PP55 fellows: “I would stress the importance of gaining experience at the grassroots level and in a variety of organizational settings. This will give you exposure and insight into the lived realities of people and the issues they grapple with, as well as insight into how organizations function.”
At a training on women's rights that Jana organized in Bangkok, Thailand, while working with International Women's Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (she is third from the left in the front row).
Jana Rumminger’s example provides an inspiring model of the impact and good that former fellows are doing in the world. The good news is, Jana is just one of many stellar Project 55 alumni who are using the skills and gifts they honed at Princeton, through fellowships, and in later graduate school work, to work for justice and human rights around the world.