Kulkarni came home from school to find her mother, an Asian immigrant, devastated after a job interview with a local hospital. The all-white, male panel was blunt: “Why do you foreigners come here and take all our jobs?”
Her parents filed a discrimination lawsuit with help from attorneys at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is headquarterd in Alabama. They won.
Kulkarni called the challenge courageous, and it taught her the value of fighting injustice. So when she saw a spike in anti-Asian hate during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kulkarni chose to fight.
