Beginning in the fall of 2024, Sarah Bernt will begin study for her MPA at Princeton. Prior to being a Mitchell Scholar, she worked as a project manager on health misinformation for the U.S. Surgeon General. Prior to that, she worked in for the city of Somerville, Massachusetts, as Community Engagement Specialist and Social Media Manager. She graduated in 2019 from Northeastern University with a degree in Political Science. She managed Mayor Joe Curtatone’s successful reelection campaign in Somerville and previously interned in the office of Senator Ed Markey. Mayor Curtatone credits Sarah with sounding the alarm about COVID-19 before most policymakers had fully realized the threat. She assisted Mayor Curtatone with organizing a regional summit of policy makers and scientific experts that was attended by mayors and city/town managers from thirty municipalities, including the mayor of Boston and the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. As a direct result of that initial meeting, municipal leaders throughout Massachusetts decided to act together and enact immediate COVID-19 mitigation measures. Sarah has been to the peace wall in Belfast, saw the Green Line between Israel and Palestine, and what remains of the wall in Germany, and she grapples with the ways in which her own city is divided. Boston’s legacy of racism and segregation touches every aspect of life: housing, education, and public safety, among others. She thought about walls, both seen and unseen, when she taught advocacy skills to students in the Boston public schools and watched them bump up against the constraints of a system that was not designed for them. Sarah studied Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation at Trinity College Dublin (Belfast).