'Outsider' UJS president: 'At last, I finally fit into the community' - The Jewish Chronicle

Newly elected Union of Jewish Students president Hannah Brady regards herself as very different from her predecessors in the job.

"I have had quite an unusual route to this position," she said. "I've I come as northerner, as a complete outsider. JSoc life for me hasn't always been inclusive, I haven't always been welcomed with open arms."

The 21-year-old, who was the sole candidate and received 81 per cent of the votes cast at last weekend's UJS conference, grew up in Newcastle, far from the north-west London Jewish bubble. As a postgraduate student in Jewish studies and Hebrew at University College London, who has also spent a year studying in Toronto, has experience of several smaller JSocs.

She is also deaf and uses hearing aids and lip-reads.

This makes Ms Brady the first postgraduate student to be elected UJS president, as well as the union's first leader to have a disability.

She has spent the past year running the first UJS Disabled Students Network, raising awareness of disability among students and advising them on how to make events more accessible.

It is one of the reasons why participation and inclusiveness are high on her agenda.

"UJS can sometimes seem like an intimidating place because it is made up of people who all knew each other growing up and if you're not a part of that crowd it takes a really long time to crack it. It needs determination and energy. But it doesn't have to be like that," she said.

The new president, who takes over from current incumbent Ella Rose in June, intends to get more students involved by organising frequent campus visits for UJS leaders. "It's about coming to students on their terms and about identifying what different groups want and need," said Ms Brady.

She has also noticed a gap in the UJS's outreach policy, with events aimed exclusively at postgraduates and foreign students. "It is a huge problem because there is a big part of the student population that we are not trying to engage with. The concerns of a postgraduate are not the same as those of an undergraduate," she said.

Ms Brady began her student career studying history at Kings College London. She has worked on Holocaust education projects in Newcastle and is a regular madrich volunteer at Limmud.

In September, she became director of training and leadership for youth movement Hanoar Hatzioni.

She considered standing for UJS president after launching a successful social media campaign, Rethink2014, earlier this year, opposing Israel Apartheid Week on campus - which compares Israel's policies towards Palestinians to apartheid and encourages boycott. Rethink2014 went "global", and led her becoming known to Jewish students across the UK.

"It's nice for me to know that, after all these years, I finally fit into the community," she said.