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“I want to build and strengthen our culture of care,” says Angela Chen, a rising senior from Hong Kong and Canada and the incoming president of the Duke Student Government (DSG). “I want to help strengthen and empower the communities and spaces that build belonging for our students, especially at a time when diversity is being challenged.”
As president, Chen aims to bring campus communities together through her CARE platform: Connection, Affordability, Reliability, and Engagement with the Durham community.
“The throughline of my presidency is to celebrate and invest in the underappreciated and underfunded parts of Duke that make Duke home for us all, to ultimately ensure that the distinctive Duke experience reaches and benefits as many Blue Devils as possible,” she explains.
Chen, a public policy and psychology double major, has been involved with DSG since her first year at Duke. “Having worked on initiatives such as running free airport transit during breaks and helping institutionalize free laundry, I realized how much of a tangible difference DSG can make in addressing equity concerns to improve the student experience,” she says. “I’m so excited to lead DSG to continue spearheading meaningful and intentional change, especially in collaboration with our campus communities!”
Finding Purpose Through Public Policy
“Coming into my first year at Duke, especially as an international student, I didn’t know what public policy was, but I knew I wanted to immerse myself in public service,” Chen says. While she was initially unsure of her academic path, she was drawn to work that focused on identifying and enacting solutions to societal inequities and finding ways to build connection amidst intense polarization and societal fragmentation.
After receiving encouragement to explore the Sanford School of Public Policy from her close friend and mentor Harris Tong PPS/Physics’25 and her Blue Devil Buddy Yadira Paz-Martinez PPS’25, Chen enrolled in “Can Journalism Save Democracy?” with Shepley Distinguished Professor of Public Policy Phil Napoli and Egan Visiting Professor Margaret Sullivan. Chen credits the course for shaping her academic direction and interest in leveraging digital policy and journalism to democratize access to information.
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Through the class she “realized how versatile and all-encompassing policy can be, and how public policy touches so many elements of our lives.” It showed her how journalism can be a catalyst for policy and political change and introduced her to technology policy, which has become one of her research interests.
“So much of the research that I do now and so much of the policy advocacy that I engage with now has to do with tech policy and making sure that we are developing public interest technologies,” she says.
As a Laidlaw Scholar through Sanford’s Hart Leadership Program, Chen researched artificial intelligence and creative economy policy in the EU and UK, culminating in presentations at the University of Oxford and Brown University, and a forthcoming Taylor and Francis publication. Her Public Policy Honors Thesis, which she will complete this upcoming academic year, explores how digital platforms influence speech norms in different countries.
Outside the classroom, Chen has continued her work with the Duke Student Government and is involved with the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy’s 9th Street Journal as a reporter and Duke’s Information Technology Advisory Council as an undergraduate representative.
“Sanford, the Hart Leadership Program, and the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy have mobilized me to engage practically with local communities, policy practitioners, and industry professionals; to listen deeply, aid in grassroots advocacy and storytelling, and push for policy solutions, both on a local and global scale,” she says. “And here at Duke, I see Duke Student Government as my lever to enact change – to celebrate my fellow Blue Devils while proactively improving campus inequities.
“Public policy is the mechanism helping me translate my deep care and love for my communities into tangible action tackling the barriers my communities face.”