Sophomore named Prudential Emerging Visionary

Saawan Duvvvuri ’26 earned the award, a cash prize, and coaching from a Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 500 financial company for his commitment to empowering students worldwide to advocate for inclusive curriculum in their schools.
By Ian Dinkins, Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications 

When Saawan Duvvuri ’26 started his education journey in Texas, he was often the only person of color in his class, he said, leading to not only feeling singled out but also upset about the lack of diversity in his class assignments and readings.

While Saawan’s classes read the classics like “The Odyssey or Antigone,” it wasn’t until he picked up a dystopian thriller called “Internment” that he said he saw a character that he could relate to and that spoke to some of the challenges that he faced as a person of color. 

Thinking that this is the kind of book classmates should read to better understand the world, Saawan decided to start LiteratureDiversified, a nonprofit advocating for equity by diversifying educational curricula and working to solve America’s racial disparities in education. 

“I noticed these racial and cultural gaps widen amongst students as we learned English and History from a Eurocentric perspective. I talked to my colored peers about the issues I saw in our education, and they voiced the same frustrations I felt with our curriculum," said Saawan. "As I flipped through the pages of ‘Internment’ and realized what the future could look like, I began to craft the idea of LiteratureDiversified.”

Since starting the nonprofit in 2023, LiteratureDiversified has connected 76 student advocates across 23 states and five countries with various racial and gender identities to advance educational equity. While the mission started with Saawan looking to change his previous school’s curricula, the mission has inspired teen activists worldwide to start chapters of LiteratureDiversified in their communities, where they develop solutions to foster more inclusive classroom environments for colored & LGBTQ+ students based on the student body at each school. 

LiteratureDiversified’s success led Saawan to be named a Prudential Emerging Visionary winner. As part of the recognition, Saawan will receive a $5,000 award to help take his nonprofit to the next level and an all-expenses-paid trip to Prudential’s headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, where Prudential employees will coach him and have the chance to meet other young leaders.

“Not only am I proud of Saawan for this achievement, but I’m excited to have students like him who are interested in the curriculum," said HS English Department Chair Freya Sachs ’00. "I’m looking forward to learning more about what he’s doing and where it overlaps with what USN is doing in terms of making sure students feel reflected in the stories they’re reading.”

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USN Mission: 
University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.