ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP - CLASS OF 2020
United Nations Academic Impact and MCN are proud to partner on the Millennium Fellowship. In the three months the application was open in 2020, 15,159 young leaders applied to join the Class of 2020 on 1,458 campuses across 135 nations. 80 campuses worldwide (just 6%) were selected to host the 1,000+ Millennium Fellows. The Class of 2020 is bold, innovative, and inclusive.
UNITED NATIONS ACADEMIC IMPACT AND MCN PROUDLY PRESENT JEFFERSON DANIEL PRUETT, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW FOR THE CLASS OF 2020.
Stanford University | California, United States | Advancing SDG 16 & UNAI 9
" Every year, it seems, voting rights are important now more than ever.” It's true that in my lifetime, the upcoming series of elections carries unusual weight, but the reality is, voting matters. Always. I see an opportunity for big tech and social media influencers to step up and elevate their voices beyond performative posts and corporate-social responsibility to use their platform to inspire everyone to vote. "
Millennium Fellowship Project: GenZ Votes
My project capitalizes on the dynamics on influencers on social media to use their platforms to encourage young people to vote. It leverage connections with Stanford and the U.N. to incentivize influencers into promoting the message to vote through short video clips.
Many influencers desire to appear socially-conscious. This can be difficult, however, when so many issues have become partisan and an influencer doesn't want to risk losing some of its fan base. It's non-partisan, however, to encourage people to vote in the first place. For my project, I will be reaching out to hundreds of influencers across Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube to ask that they include certains hashtag in any of their posts or allocate just ten seconds as the end of a Youtube video directing subscribers to voter registration.
About the Millennium Fellow
JD is a rising sophomore at Stanford University where he studies chemical engineering and human rights. He's a strong believer that tech hasn't pulled its weight outside Silicon Valley and looks forward to leveraging new technologies for the intersection between sustainability, energy, and social justice.
The serious stuff: JD has applied statistics to develop anti-corruption voter strategy in the US, written government-approved conservation plans for porpoises in Cambodia, and developed new tensile roofing designs for a UNESCO site in Peru.
The good stuff: JD's whole life is chaotic improv scene; he loves soccer, brownies, and backpacking.
