I'm honored Ohio State has chosen to honor me with 2019's Young Alumni Achievement Award. My life here as a student helped shape me into the leader I am today — someone dedicated to service, focused on creating opportunities for others and deeply aware of the accidental privilege life has afforded me to thrive in the face of hardship, structural barriers and systemic inequities. I am grateful to hold these perspectives in my head and heart. These traits have become my personal life preservers to survive the times we are living through as a nation today.

 

 

We all want the same things, we are all due peace but some of us are burdened to go through unfair, unjust, extraordinary ordeals to get the humanity we should all be due. 

 

I do not believe revolutions to be at odds with peace. I believe revolutions represent a shift, a recognition that there is a gap between the world we have and the world we deserve. We must meet revolutions in order to meet peace. 

 

I do not know if, in this revolutionary moment, we stand in a funeral or a reckoning but I would like to use this opportunity as Ohio State's 2019's Young Alumni Achievement Award honoree to help women seeking reproductive healthcare in Ohio gain some peace. 

 

There is extreme suffering and extreme fear around the country as women's bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom is under attack. It does not have to be this way.