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Andrea Batista Schlesinger, 30

Executive Director

Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

When her teenage peers were obsessed with crushes and clothes, Andrea Batista Schlesinger spent her free time writing fiery letters about the school system to then-Mayor David Dinkins. Her senior year, the straight-A Brooklyn native was chosen to be the student representative on the New York City Board of Education.

Ms. Schlesinger is now executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy. Established in 1961 by Harry Wachtel, an adviser to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the think tank advocates for progressive policies on such issues as immigrant rights and the betterment of the middle class. U.S. senators use her arguments in their stump speeches.

"Under Andrea, DMI is really leading the national conversation on the middle class," says Kathy Wylde, chief executive of the New York City Partnership.

In the two years since former President Fernando Ferrer left and Ms. Schlesinger became the sole head of the nonprofit, its budget has nearly tripled, to $1.1 million. During the midterm elections, DMI's ads on Google grading each candidate had 24 million hits.

This is just the beginning for Ms. Schlesinger, who is up nights thinking about ways to help more people achieve the American dream. She says her passion comes from having watched her Dominican mother and Jewish father struggle financially in her childhood.

"My parents always tell me to leave this and go be a corporate lawyer and make money," Ms. Schlesinger says. "But I feel these issues deeply."

- Miriam Kreinan Souccar

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