Business & Government Professional Interest Council

Lelina Chang hails from New York and is pursuing a dual MBA/MPP with the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is a current Zuckerman Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership and received a BS in Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology and a BA in Sociology from Yale University, where she conducted immunology research at Yale Medical School.

After graduating, she joined Deloitte as a Government and Public Sector Consultant. She spearheaded and developed an Anti-racism and Environmental Justice Curriculum and action toolkit as a personal project. It rapidly gained traction and transformed into a corporate grassroots movement, expanding nationally across Deloitte US. The curriculum is now available firm-wide to 120k+ practitioners. She became the youngest founding member of Deloitte’s Climate Equity Practice, which focuses on supporting agencies to meet their Justice40 Executive Order mandates and equitably distribute billions of dollars of federal climate investment benefits to address climate change and uplift disadvantaged communities.

She transitioned to part-time at Deloitte in 2021 so she could go home to run the family business and enable her parents to retire. The business is crucial to her identity as a second-generation Malaysian-Taiwanese immigrant and is an avenue for her to continue building her local community. Alongside leaders across government, non-profits, health, Lelina was one of only two women in manufacturing to be nominated for the 2024 Power Women of Queens, which honors “those fearless females who make Queens, New York a thriving and vibrant place it is to work, live, and do business.” Her leadership and work for the community have been featured on US Metal and Glass Magazine, the US Glass Magazine, and the New York Real Estate Journal.

With AI disrupting every industry, Lelina is committed to not only understanding how to apply AI to rapidly evolving equitable climate solutions but also the role policy plays in ensuring small businesses can keep up with AI-leveraging machinery and smart technology. She's passionate about building a cohort of peers in the B&G PIC that focus on policy drivers that can tackle some of the private sector's toughest intersectional challenges—in climate, AI, healthcare and food access, and resilient infrastructure—while uplifting marginalized communities. 

Barika Edwards is a MC-MPA candidate at HKS, specializing in the intersection of business, disruptive technology, and public policy. With a deep commitment to social impact, Barika was a cofounder and as CEO of OweYaa, an award-winning HR tech social enterprise dedicated to connecting transitioning veterans and military spouses with high-growth jobs in the tech sector. Under her leadership, OweYaa evolved from a concept to a nationally recognized platform, significantly increasing employment opportunities for underrepresented groups.

Barika graduated cum laude from the Harvard Extension School with a Bachelor of Liberal Arts in Social Science, a certificate in Social Justice, and a focus on Business Management. She also was a Global Social Impact Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and a Riordan MBA Fellow at UCLA Anderson.