Elevate Prize winners gain more than $300K in funding. They learn to better tell their own stories
For Mónica Ramírez, being named one of this year’s 10 Elevate Prize winners means so much more than the monetary and structural support that comes with it.
It means the work she does with her Fremont, Ohio-based nonprofit Justice for Migrant Women, which advocates for the rights and needs of migrant women and other marginalized communities, is still valued despite the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“As immigrant and migrant community members are being threatened and attacked around our country, it’s really important to have shows of support like the Elevate Prize is providing because we’ve seen a retraction — a big retraction — in support,” said Ramirez, who burst into tears when she learned she had won. “The award means we are able to do the work that we know is so urgently needed.”
Like all Elevate Prize winners announced Tuesday, Justice for Migrant Women will receive $300,000 in unrestricted funding and Ramirez, its founder and president, will receive support and training on organizational growth and increasing the group’s visibility.
Elevate Prize Foundation CEO Carolina Garcia Jayaram told The Associated Press that a group’s public profile has become more important these days. Not only does it help with fundraising and informing the public, but visibility “is also a form of protection,” she said.
“It’s more important than ever to double down on leaders like Monica,” said Jayaram, adding that one of last year’s Elevate Prize winners, Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, had been barred from the United States by the State Department last year for what Secretary of State Marco Rubio called “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.” A federal judge in December blocked the Trump administration from detaining Ahmed, a British citizen who lives in Washington.
To help Elevate Prize winners get more attention for their work, Jayaram said the foundation is launching “Good Is Trending,” an initiative that will include taking over NASDAQ’s Times Square billboards on Tuesday to shine a spotlight on the winners.
That bigger spotlight is something prize winner Mara Fleishman, CEO of Chef Ann Foundation, which brings made-from-scratch meals to schools, hopes will bring her nonprofit to the next level. The Boulder, Colorado-based organization has already attracted support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Waverley Street Foundation for its work, which supports elementary and secondary schools in developing menus that are less dependent on processed foods and utilize more fresh local produce.
“We’ve worked with over 17,000 schools and reached more than five million kids,” Fleishman said. “But how do we take the work we’ve done and turn it into something digestible for legislators and advocates to understand what is possible?”
Fleishman said her foundation needs to find ways to get the public to become a “force multiplier” for its message and carry it into school board meetings and statehouses around the country.
A lot of that work can be done through storytelling, Jayaram said. And the Elevate Prize selection panel took the potential stories the nominees could tell into account when choosing the winners.
“People pay more attention to people than they do to issues,” Jayaram said. “So when you can ground an issue in the story of a person, of a community, of a neighborhood, suddenly the whole world can start to engage and relate to that because it’s not that different from a community and a neighborhood and a family somewhere else.”
The Elevate Prize Foundation has believed in the power of storytelling for years. Last year, it even launched its own production house Elevate Studios to tell the stories of its prize winners more effectively, on platforms ranging from YouTube videos to feature-length documentaries released in theaters.
Ramirez says she looks forward to telling the stories of the people she supports through Justice for Migrant Women.
“I really think that the Elevate Prize is going to help us give a microphone to the people that we serve,” she said. “That’s my hope.”
The 2026 class of Elevate Prize winners are: Shabana Basij-Rasikh, president and co-founder of SOLA (School of Leadership, Afghanistan) for Afghan girls; Hillary Blout, founder and executive director of For the People, which helps people get released from prison; Manu Chopra, CEO of Karya, which brings AI advancements to low-income communities; Mara Fleishman, CEO of Chef Ann Foundation, which brings made-from-scratch meals to schools; Aisha Nyandoro, CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, which supports residents living in federally subsidized affordable housing; Tom Osborn, founder and CEO of Shamiri Institute, which brings mental health care to underserved regions, starting with Africa; Ai-jen Poo, executive director of Caring Across Generations, which centers care as a national priority; Mónica Ramírez, founder and president of Justice for Migrant Women, which supports migrant and rural women’s rights; Krutika Ravishankar, co-founder and executive director of Farmers for Forests, which protects and restores forests across India; Utkarsh Saxena, executive director of Adalat AI, which develops AI tools for the court system.
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