From Campus Green to City Hall: Closing My HDS Chapter

Where the Stories, Songs, and Questions First Met

When I first stepped onto the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) campus green, I was carrying more than my backpack. I brought with me the stories of my grandmother, a feminist activist and storyteller whose narratives shaped my understanding of justice, care, and community. My mother’s unwavering devotion taught me to approach challenges not as defeats, but as opportunities for growth, reminding me each day that I am never alone. And from my uncle, I inherited a fierce sense of possibility, a belief that the world was always larger than my fears and that I should never doubt my ability to move through it with purpose. Alongside them, I carried years of study in religion and humanities, questions about power and ethics, and the hope that HDS would be a place where all of these parts of myself could exist together. Now, as I prepare to leave HDS, I realize this place has not only deepened those questions, but also shown me what it means to live within community.

Coming from my time as a undergraduate, I did not always feel I had the space to build community alongside academics. At HDS, that changed. I learned that community can begin with a simple conversation between friends and grow into something much larger. In the fall of 2025, a friend and I co-founded the first Latine and Caribbean Students Association (LACSA) at HDS. The group emerged from conversations about identity, belonging, and what it means to be seen in our fullness within a divinity school context. Together, we organized a mutual aid benefit for Hurricane Melissa relief efforts and began planning an October 2026 LACSA conference while building relationships with other Latine and Caribbean groups across Harvard. Around the same time, my friend and fellow student, Armond Dorsey, MDiv ’27, and I created an Open Mic Night to showcase the many talents within the HDS community. What began as a single evening of music and poetry quickly became something people asked us to continue. In spring 2026, we hosted another open mic night, hoping it might become a lasting HDS tradition. Music became an unexpectedly central thread in my HDS experience.

Scholarship, Responsibility, and Transformation

My research on narrative ethics, storytelling, and human rights, along with my ethnographic project on my Jamaican Maroon grandmother, deeply shaped my sense of vocation. Yet through classrooms, performances, and events like the 2026 Harvard Arts Fest, I came to understand how integral music is to my own practice of care and ethical discernment. HDS helped me realize that my voice, both literal and metaphorical, belongs in the worlds I hope to help shape.

My time here has also been defined by academic and professional experiences that sharpened my commitments. Working as a research assistant with Dr. Terrence Johnson during the summer of 2025 on the Black and Jewish Leadership Initiative invited me into conversations about solidarity, memory, and the possibilities that emerge when communities confront histories of anti-Blackness and antisemitism together. That work resonated deeply with my internship at the Council on American-Islamic Relations Florida chapter (CAIR-FL), where I witnessed how advocacy for Muslim communities unfolds in legal and social contexts. Courses like “Mashpee and Harvard: Braided Histories” with Dr. Ann Braude challenged us to see Harvard as part of a contested landscape shaped by Indigenous perseverance and demands for self-governance. “Power, Violence, and Resistance in World Christianity” with Dr. Gina Zurlo opened my eyes to the diversity of Christian expression worldwide and the complex relationship between religion, violence, and resistance.

Some of the most formative moments of my time at HDS, however, happened in the quiet rhythms of daily work. As a graduate assistant in the HDS Office of Admissions for the past two years, I have had the privilege of working alongside amazing people. Together, we supported prospective students as they discerned whether HDS might become a home for them. Seeing the behind the scenes work that goes into welcoming each new class has been humbling—it has felt like a gift to offer future students the same care and encouragement that I have been offered throughout my academic journey. Working as a gallery attendant at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute also taught me the discipline of stillness and the power of silence as its own kind of conversation.

Looking Ahead: Fellowship, Fear, and Flow

The HDS campus green has held so many of my emotions. It was the first place I entered when I arrived and, fittingly, it will be the last place I stand as a student when I graduate. I have laughed with friends there, called family back home in North Lauderdale, and sat in quiet awe at the reality that I am here. That patch of grass became a place where I could lay down my worries and pick up a little more courage each time. 

As I prepare to graduate and begin a new chapter as a Bloomberg Harvard City Hall Fellow in Port St. Lucie, Florida, I feel a blend of excitement, fear, and gratitude. Excitement, because this fellowship will allow me to bring my interests in ethics, governance, and storytelling into the concrete work of city life. Fear, because leaving a place that has become another home is never easy. Gratitude, because HDS has shown me what it means to build belonging with others. I am especially honored to be singing at the Multireligious Commencement Service, where I will perform an original song I wrote titled, “We Are Here.” It feels like a fitting way to close this chapter, with my voice joining those of classmates, mentors, and friends who have shaped me throughout these years. If I had to summarize what HDS has taught me, it would be this: we are all learning how to show up more fully for one another and for the worlds we inhabit. As I step into what comes next, I carry with me a line from my song that reminds me why we do this work at all: “It’s to go and change the world we know, we were made to grow so let your talents flow.”