Student Wins New York Emmy for Civic Education Video

Kunchok Dolma, a first-year student at the University of Virginia School of Law, won a New York Emmy for producing a video demonstrating a working couple’s fight for employee benefits.

She was creator and supervising producer for “Rolando’s Rights,” produced by We Speak NYC, a civic education initiative of the New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. The New York chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced the winners at a ceremony Saturday at The Marriott Marquis in Times Square. The video and its seven-member team won in the Informational/Instructional category.

“I hope we can translate this win into increased funding for our program and other adult education programs,” Dolma said. “Adult education is essential to inclusion but an underfunded and underserved field.”

Dolma, a first-generation college student from Queens, was involved with the project since its inception in 2009 and returned after graduate school to revitalize the program after We Speak NYC was injected with funding for new content, including seven new videos.

“Although I am transitioning careers from education and public service to the legal field, I think the key lesson I received from the win is that we are as good as the community around us,” she said. “I was able to do good, useful work because I had a community around me to help accomplish that work. In the legal field as well, I hope I will get the opportunity to build that community to be a more effective lawyer.”

Dolma received a bachelor’s in English literature and political science from the Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York and an M.Phil in international relations from the University of Oxford.