Sarah Torres

I’m from the Bronx originally. My grandparents are all from Puerto Rico, and my parents were both born in New York City. I’m very in touch with that culture. 

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I fell in love with history in the 4th grade.

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We were learning about the American Revolution, the colonists, loyalists, all that. And I just fell in love with history. 

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And then in 2015, my family did a road trip across the country. And on that trip, we stopped in Texas to see my cousin. And on the TV in the hotel room, there's the Presidential Debate going on. So as this 11, 12 year old, I’m kind of taking in this changing landscape of electoral politics. Learning more about the election and what's going on in politics. 

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I decided almost right then and there that I wanted to be the president of the United States. That was my goal for a very long time. So that was around 6th grade.

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I did a lot of reading about politics and I was very focused on that. And when I turned 16, I decided to volunteer in my local city council member's office. 

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COVID had ravaged my neighborhood and it was really hard to see. 

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The Bronx historically has a lot of respiratory issues because of air quality. And COVID was a respiratory disease. So a lot of people in the Bronx were really heavily affected. There were also a lot of essential workers living in the Bronx. My dad was an essential worker, he’s a city bus driver.

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Seeing how the COVID numbers were always highest in the Bronx, everything is always the most difficult where we are. It's really hard to hear that and not feel enraged and want to act. So I decided to help out. My mom was like, you should e-mail our council member. And I did, and they were so excited.They were like, oh my God, a student! So they invited me to the food giveaways that they hosted at the city council's office. There were thousands of boxes. We were serving hundreds of people at every single event. 

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It all started just from an email, and I think about that a lot. And from there, I've been very involved in local politics, Bronx politics specifically.

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While I was volunteering in my city council member's office, I saw the realities of local politics. 

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It's a balance of kind of seeing the good that can come from these offices and also where to improve. And from there, I worked for a community board, which is the most local form of government in New York City. It's a board of volunteers who vote on things like housing, liquor licenses, and budget priorities. I was 17 at the time, and the next youngest person was 33. And I was voting on affordable housing, voting on the policies that I care about, encouraging budget priorities that matter to me and that I know matter to my neighbors.

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My most impactful moment on the community board was when we were going over budget priorities, and I saw that segways for the police were higher up on the list than workforce development programs and SAT programs for Bronx students. And I was like, wait a minute, that's off. So I had to quickly think on my feet, how am I going to frame this conversation in a way that everybody's going to understand? And I took the time to just say, listen, these children need this. We need this in order to move forward. There's paths out of poverty, and it's education and working, right? And this is how we get our children to move forward. And everybody agreed with me, and it ended up being a consensus that we needed to move that priority up. So that was one of my proudest moments, because a lot of the time it's very hard to speak up.

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I think my involvement showed my dad that he should get involved. And after seeing all of the work that I put into public service, he's getting much more involved in his union and also trying to get on the community board. So I think doing these things has been inspiring for the people around me, because they're able to see that they can also impact change in the community.

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I've worked at the city, state, and federal levels of government –  I worked for my state assembly member and I worked for my congressman. And my favorite thing that I've done hands down was being on my city community board. Nothing felt more impactful than saying, I think this is a great idea or we need to stop this and make sure there's more, for example, an affordable housing development in the South Bronx. In my experience, the difference of working at each level of government is that things become increasingly political as you move up. 

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My second internship with a state assembly member was primarily constituent services related. I'd answer phones, and we were just in the office all day, but there were a few moments where I still got out. I saw people at different community events and talked to them about all of the opportunities and services that we offer. 

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During my internship in a federal congressional office, I almost never got to leave that office. For the most part, it was answering phones, a lot of getting berated on the phone. I'd say the experience wasn't nearly as rewarding as the more local offices that I worked in, just because in a bigger office, there's more specific roles that you fill. It's just how it is. So there's less like, oh, we need to pull you into this, we need to pull you into that.

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I was set on studying political science from the moment I entered high school. 

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I got a scholarship here at Syracuse University, and for that scholarship, they invited us up for a weekend. You stay for a weekend, you get to know the campus, you get to know the people. They had dinner for us in the dome, and every student got to sit with a different faculty member. Our table had the dean of my school. And after speaking to him, I was completely set on coming to Syracuse. I knew I was coming here. 

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And honestly, it has been the best decision I've ever made. I have loved my time here. This school is perfect for me. It has everything that I want. The Maxwell School is one of the best schools for public affairs. 

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I’m part of the Puerto Rican Student Association, first as Philanthropy Chair and now as Vice President. In the spring, I crossed into the Relentless Rho chapter of Hermandad de Sigma Iota Alpha, Incorporada, and we're planning out so many service events for this semester. So it's all about just finding what the community needs and moving forward with that.

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The Summer Policy Academy was such a big deal for me. Throughout college I felt like I was being pulled into other professional fields, and it encouraged me to stay focused on public service and keep going.

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There is a Next Generation Service Corps group here on campus, which I applied to and got in. A lot of the meetings were focused on professional development, which I appreciated. But one of the opportunities that stood out to me was the Summer Policy Academy. I applied, and at first I got waitlisted. And then I remember it had been a little over a week and I was on spring break. I was sitting on my couch and I got the email that I got in and I freaked out. I was so happy. It felt like all the work I was putting in was finally rewarded. 

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So I took the train down to DC. And we did a residential study at Howard University, which was really cool. Making friends, meeting people was really fun because we're all involved in the same thing. And we're learning in the True Reformer Building, which has a ton of history on its own. And it was such an incredible honor to be involved and learning. I felt so seen through the things that I was learning.

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The first week was a lot of professional development, learning from public service leaders who were speaking very frankly about the public service world that we're about to head into as rising seniors. Then the second week we headed to Seattle and focused on social policy, specifically graduate school techniques for analyzing policy. I loved that. It made me certain that I wanted to go to grad school. And now I'm in the process of applying.

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