Oona chatterjee biography make the road
Oona chatterjee biography make the road trip!
The Next Generation: 21 Under 40 Making a Difference
Contribute
Oona Chatterjee, 34
Community activist
Oona Chatterjee wasn’t always an activist; she was a student journalist, then a lawyer.
While volunteering to help low-income people navigate the welfare system, she realized she wanted to do more.
Oona chatterjee biography make the road
“Although I have a lot of respect for legal services attorneys,” says Chatterjee, “they never get to explore why people have those problems and challenge the root causes.”
In 1997, Chatterjee, then an NYU law student, co-founded Make the Road by Walking, a nonprofit in the low-income, immigrant neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn, where 40 percent of its 100,000 residents live below the poverty line and unemployment hovers at nearly 20 percent.
The nonprofit aims to help residents speak up against injustice and improve living conditions. “It’s a place where you can say what yo