Please join us for lunch!
For our meeting Monday, December 19th 2022, we welcome
Councilwoman Aditi Bussells.
It is our last meeting of the year so we will all be singing 12 days of Christmas lead by Rusty DuPass.
Dr. Aditi Srivastav Bussells is a public health researcher who has dedicated her career to improving programs, systems, and policies that directly impact children’s health and well-well-being. She specializes in the topics of adverse childhood experiences (also known as childhood trauma), risk behavior prevention, health communication, and community resilience.
Born to immigrant parents from India, Dr. Bussells learned at a very young age, the importance of hard work and ensuring that everyone, regardless of their background, has access to opportunities. It was the discrimination that her family faced during 9/11, that inspired her to pursue a career in public health.
Dr. Bussells has vast experience working with the government and non-profit sectors. As the Director of Research at the Children’s Trust of South Carolina, she led the South Carolina Adverse Childhood Experiences Initiative and KIDS COUNT South Carolina. Through these initiatives, she helped communities across South Carolina build the capacity to make data-driven decisions that benefit the health and well-being of all kids.
Currently, Dr. Bussells is working as a Senior Consultant on the federal health team at Deloitte. In this role, she works with various federal health agencies to optimize how they serve children and families. She also serves as Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Health Promotion, Education and Behavior at the University of South Carolina, teaching undergraduate public health classes.
Dr. Bussells received her Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina as a Doris Duke Foundation Fellow. She holds a master’s degree in public health from George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in American government from the University of Virginia. In 2020, Dr. Bussells was awarded the Columbia Business Monthly’s 30 under 35 Best and Brightest and the Hon. Jim Clyburn’s Emerging Leader in Health Equity Research Award for her work.
Dr. Bussells has always been deeply involved in the community. She was a founding partner of Resilient Richland, a county-wide initiative focused on preventing childhood trauma through training, partnership, and community engagement. She also served on the City of Columbia’s Complete Count Committee for the 2020 Census. She is a graduate of the 2021 class of Leadership Columbia and is currently a board member of Columbia Opportunity Resource.
Dr. Bussells ran for the at-large seat with the vision that Columbia can be a real destination for families to live, work, and play. By tackling the root cause of crime, bringing more family-supporting jobs to the city, and improving the city’s infrastructure, Dr. Bussells believes that Columbia can be more prosperous, vibrant, and equitable. Her victory was historic, making her the first South Asian American woman to be elected to Columbia City Council and receiving the most votes out of any candidate running in the 2021 city council election cycle.
Dr. Bussells lives in the Historic Earlewood Neighborhood with her two dogs, and husband Louis, an Army veteran and frontline provider.