Aliya Bhatia is the Executive Director at Vot-ER and Civic Health Month where she works to bring voter registration into health care settings, including emergency rooms, hospitals, and community health centers. Founded in 2019 by Dr. Alister Martin, Vot-ER has helped tens of thousands of healthcare professionals and patients to get ready to vote and has appeared in the New York Times, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Washington Post, NBC, CNN, NPR, and more.
She completed her Masters in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School as a Sheila C. Johnson Leadership Fellow and is a graduate of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Aliya was drawn to the connection between health and democracy through the combination of being raised by parents in the medical field and various defining experiences while studying, teaching, and working on housing and health initiatives.
Aliya started her career as a high school educator and then as a strategy consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). She prioritizes diversity and inclusion in all her endeavors.
Aliya resides in Washington, DC where she works to realize Vot-ER’s vision of healthy communities powered by an inclusive democracy. She is a Georgia native and has worked in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri.
As of December 2022, Vot-ER has placed voter registration kits in the hands of over 30,000 front-line healthcare professionals, supported 75,000 Americans on their journey to get ready to vote, partnered with over 700 hospitals, and brought together over 300 formal partners through Civic Health Month.
Prior to Vot-ER, Aliya worked primarily in the crade-to-career education space and in private sector consulting. She taught in New Orleans through Teach For America, served for-profit and social impact clients at the Boston Consulting Group, and helped to launch Purpose Built Schools.
More than anything, Aliya relishes working at the crossroads between different fields and disciplines. She loves projects and conversations that cut across topics such as democracy, diversity, education, housing, health, technology, policy, and leadership. In addition to her work at Vot-ER, Aliya serves as an advisor for the Colorado Youth Congress and Business for America and as a board member for Sewn Arts and Common Good Atlanta. For fun, she enjoys brainstorming big ideas with friends and mentors, riding the coattails of her former students, and dabbling in the visual and performing arts.
