Zaakir Tameez (Col ’19) grew up in Houston, the oldest of three boys, and the grandson of immigrants from Hyderabad, India. Even before he came to UVA on a Posse Scholarship, he was a young man with a mission.

As a high school student, Tameez founded an organization called the Houston Independent School District Student Congress with the aim of uniting thousands of area students to confront public school disparities in Houston. The organization is still active and represents more than 220,000 students. During Tameez’s tenure, it sent 100 representatives to Austin to lobby for a bill to reform the state’s school funding system. After the bill failed, Tameez co-wrote a 35-page amicus brief to file with the Texas Supreme Court; in it he used ordinary students’ stories to demonstrate inequality and support an ongoing school finance lawsuit. The court ultimately dismissed the case but mentioned him in the written decision, describing the document as “excellent.” Tameez was on his way.

Now, he’s the inaugural Presidential Fellow, working in President Ryan’s office until June before heading to Yale Law School in the fall.

How did you become the inaugural Presidential Fellow?
President Ryan wanted to have a former student in his office to keep him in the loop and informed in his decision-making. I had actually heard of President Ryan during the student initiative I led in Houston. Then, when I arrived at UVA, I read what I call his “nerdy stuff”: his body of work on school finance law, which is his academic field. Fascinated to learn more, I asked to meet with him when he became president. We had a 20 minute “walking meeting” in the fall of 2018. A few months later, I was invited to interview for this position.

What are your day-to-day duties?
My portfolio changes every day—it’s a constant juggling act between six or seven different projects at a time. My colleagues might tell me that my perspective is helpful and ask me to do a “deep dive” into a subject. Or the president might say, “I wonder about X…?”

I’m contributing to the Good Neighbor Program that is part of the 2030 Plan, and I also work with other partnerships in the community. I do some speechwriting for the president; I took an acting class my first year, which was very helpful to me when writing in his voice. There’s also a lot of research. For example, the president attends many events, and I’ll research these ahead of time to provide him with a fuller picture of what to expect.

Now that you’ve seen how the President’s Office works, what are your impressions?
I’ve been impressed at how kind, welcoming, and fun the atmosphere in the office is. It’s a very supportive environment. Everyone there is looking out for me. The president asks us to call him Jim and doesn’t take himself too seriously. He has the same persona outside as inside. Well, maybe there are too many dad jokes…

It’s well-known that the president is a first-generation college graduate, so how committed is he to scholarships?
He’s deeply committed but not in a flashy way. He truly wants this to be a good, not just a great, university. It’s a question of how we can orient our entire institution to be more accepting of first-generation students. Who do we want to be? We want to be a world-class institution that also has heart and soul. It’s all about doing stuff in the right way.

How did your scholarship change your life?
One thing my scholarship taught me is to set the bar a little higher than you think you can reach and to lift others as you climb. That’s what scholarships do.