 The Gerald Ford Presidential Fellowship has meant a lot to me personally. It's felt like a real honor to uphold Gerald Ford's legacy. He was a huge supporter of the state of Michigan and giving back to his home and that's part of the fellowship that feels really special to me. I love Michigan and it's my home and I want to enact change here and so I think that's a really special part of this fellowship. Financial support has really allowed me to make the very most of my time here at the University of Michigan. I've really been able to dive super deep into all of my studies and into the community here and the surrounding community in ways that I wouldn't be able to if I had financial concerns while I was here as well. This fellowship has really helped to set me up for my future career. One huge way that it's done this is by allowing me to take an unpaid internship with the City of Detroit Mayor's Office this summer and I've really been able to kind of experience firsthand and on the ground a lot of the things that I've learned about in my coursework last year have been really an exciting part of the urban revitalization and the really incredible work that's happening in Detroit. So all of those experiences in the city have really helped to help me kind of think about what I'm going to want to do going forward. I am a native Michigander, I grew up in Metro Detroit. A lot of my family, three of my four grandparents lived in Detroit, raised families in Detroit, had businesses in Detroit and I moved away to do some work in New York City and being back has felt really incredible so to be back home and sort of devoting my energy and the skills that I'm learning to Detroit which is a city that I love and a city that feels like home means a lot to me.