Apoorva Reddy Neelapu was two weeks away from having to leave the United States when she got a job offer from the World Bank.
A native of Hyderabad, India, Neelapu, had come to the U.S. to earn a degree in public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, but visa restrictions under the Trump administration made it hard for her to find work.
“I was unemployed for more than a year,” she told the Hyattsville Wire. “I was doing internships but it got extremely hard to find a full-time offer as an immigrant.”
Neelapu, who is 31, moved to College Park in 2018 while she looked for work in Washington, and stayed after getting a job as a consultant at the World Bank.
Her time living in the area inspired her to start a volunteer group called The Immigrant Project, which helps foreign students living in the U.S. find their first professional jobs.
It also inspired her art. Neelapu sells her paintings, which include brightly colored abstract art as well as more impressionistic pieces, through Instagram. She ships her art worldwide.
She recently launched a new climate change collection where each piece of art created helps to explain what climate change means.
