Zyahna Bryant

Award-Winning Student Activist/Organizer

Zyahna Bryant is an award-winning student activist/organizer studying political and social thought and African American studies at the University of Virginia, a content creator, and a social impact strategist. Zyahna founded the Charlottesville High School Black Student Union at the age of 14. In the Spring of 2016, Zyahna wrote a petition calling for the removal of Confederate statues from Charlottesville’s parks, and City Council voted to remove them in 2017.

In 2019, Zyahna was appointed as the youngest member of Virginia’s African American Advisory Board, where she serves as the co-chair of the education subcommittee.Governor Northam on issues that impact African Americans across the commonwealth. In 2020, she joined Facebook’s We The Culture Creator Program, where she uses her platform to create and produce content focused on civic engagement and social justice issues. She was named as a 2020 Root Young Futurist, a member of the 2020 BET 100, and Teen Vogue’s 21 under 21 class of 2019. 

Zyahna has been featured in The New York Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker Magazine, Forbes; and featured on Vice News, PBS, CNN, and BET. In 2018, she was awarded the Princeton Prize in Race Relations and the Bassett Award for Community Engagement from Yale University. Zyahna has served as a Student School Board Representative for the Charlottesville City Schools division and is a passionate advocate for educational equity.