Hi all! I’m Isabella, a rising junior studying Public Policy and Statistics. I enjoy reading (I’m a Goodreads enthusiast), going to concerts (Taylor Swift on the 27th and no I’m not gonna shut up about it!!!), road tripping with friends, trying new coffee shops and restaurants, watching SNL, and making niche Spotify playlists (194 and counting). My top three favorite things in life are DMCs (Deep Meaningful Conversations), mint Oreo ice cream, and overusing parentheses in my writing.

I was born and raised in Texas, in a suburb outside of Dallas. Very homogenous area– white, Christian, conservative. If you Google the name of the high school I attended, you’ll see a few lovely headlines about how the district has been hit with multiple federal civil rights investigations. The obstacles I faced and the experiences I had as an Asian girl growing up in this kind of place led me to become passionate about women’s rights from a very young age. I was very politically active, but also so outspoken. Opportunities for me to get involved with the issues I cared about were few and far between.

Coming to Duke was like entering a parallel universe. I was thrilled by the number of campus organizations that genuinely aligned with my values, and more importantly, the communities that I could join where other people cared about the same things that I cared about. When I came across the DukeEngage New York program, I immediately knew that it was a community I wanted to become a part of.

This summer, I’m incredibly excited to be working at The New Majority. Gender equity in politics is a cause I’ve always been passionate about, and to actually work for an organization dedicated to it is, as corny as it sounds, genuinely a dream come true. College has been full of quite a bit of uncertainty for me in terms of figuring out what I want to do with my future, so I’m proud of my decision to put my passions first this summer. I’m so looking forward to sharing these next two months with the rest of my cohort, and all the learning and growth we’ll experience together. I hope to leave New York with a broadened perspective, a continued drive for change, and improved cooking skills.

Here’s to an exciting summer… see you in the Big Apple 🙂