The Year 2 Faculty features speakers who can speak to the process of being a young leader and focusing on specific leadership skills.
Kimberly Vasquez was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Since her freshman year at Baltimore City College High School, Kimberly has been a powerful leader within SOMOS (Students Organizing a Multicultural and Open Society), a student-led advocacy organization that tackles injustice in schools, Baltimore, and across the nation. During her 4-year tenure at SOMOS, Kimberly successfully championed fights for fair academic opportunities for ESOL students, a safe reopening of schools, a moratorium on standardized testing, and more.
Throughout the pandemic, Kimberly worked relentlessly to close the digital divide. Part of this campaign included giving public testimony that resulted in 3 million dollars being transferred to Baltimore Schools for devices and internet access and successfully pressuring Comcast to double their Internet Essentials speeds for low-income subscribers, impacting over 1 million people nationwide. Kimberly’s work during this unprecedented crisis has been nationally recognized in the New York Times, Buzzfeed, Reuters, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and beyond.
This fall Kimberly will be attending Goucher College.
Dr. Hallie Schiff, PT, DPT is a physical therapist working to improve the lives of patients with chronic illness. She earned her Bachelors of Science in Kinesiology in 2013 at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she was part of the Honors Program as well as Kinesiology Honors. She then completed her Doctorate of Physical Therapy at Drexel University in 2016. Dr. Hallie worked as a pediatric physical therapist with children ages 1 month to 21 years, each with various complexities of needs. During the same time, she was diagnosed with multiple debilitating chronic illnesses and began a blog dedicated to sharing her experience and knowledge gained through her process and physical therapy expertise. Through her blog, Dr. Hallie connected with patients across the globe and is now working to educate and empower patients to take charge of their own medical care.
Phebe Grosser is a senior at the Corcoran School of Art and Design at George Washington University studying photojournalism. When Phebe was in high school, she was on the board of the Art Honor Society and the photo editor of her yearbook in addition to being active in other arts organizations. During her time at GW. She founded an arts fraternity to bring the arts community at GW together and advocate for the importance of art education. In addition to photography, Phebe loves going to the different art museums in DC, especially the Hirshhorn!