Claudia Romeu

By Ginger O’Donnell 

Claudia Romeu, AB ’08, grew up in Puerto Rico, where she was raised with strong values, including a deep sense of social responsibility toward others. At the same time, her upbringing was shaped by a relative lack of cultural diversity. Studying social anthropology at WashU helped open her eyes to other ways of living and the breadth of human experience. She deepened this understanding through her participation in the Annika Rodriguez Scholars Program, forming a lifelong commitment to serving under-resourced communities.

Upon graduating, she joined the Peace Corps, supporting sex education and reproductive rights for women and girls in a remote village of Peru. Transformed by the different ways of living she experienced, she went on to pursue a master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley. Now, she continues to make a global impact as the associate director of programs at Rise Up, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering local leaders across the world to advocate for more equitable laws and policies around health, education, and economic opportunity. As the mother of two daughters in a trilingual household that mixes Spanish, English, and Baluchi (a regional language of Pakistan, where her husband is from), Romeu also integrates diversity across national borders in her personal life.

“I very much consider myself a citizen of the world,” she says. “As a woman and as a mom, I see myself as a social anthropologist. The world is a place for me to explore, and I have a deep interest in understanding other people’s experiences.”

Romeu’s work at Rise Up deals with a wide swath of issues — from environmental justice to indigenous rights — recognizing the intersectionality of social equity and public health. “All these issues are connected, and you can’t dissect them squarely or perfectly,” she says. Romeu oversees the implementation of projects in nearly 10 countries across Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and the U.S., focused on causes such as reducing domestic violence, ending child marriage, and strengthening disability rights for women and girls. Collectively, the organization’s global network of 800 leaders has successfully advocated for more than 185 new or improved laws and policies, affecting roughly 160 million people and counting.

“Over the years, we’ve clearly seen that those most affected by problems are the ones who should lead the solutions,” Romeu says. “What excites me is that I’m contributing to a larger movement toward global justice and gender justice. We’re helping leaders in other countries gain knowledge and training to advocate for the needs they recognize in their own communities.”

“WashU painted the picture of what was out there,” she says. “It’s up to me to take the steps forward to contribute solutions and make a difference.”

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