PAULA DA SILVA

Hometown: Miami, Florida
School: University of Miami
Major: Biochemistry

Paula Da Silva was born in Caracas, Venezuela. When she was only 3 months old, her parents immigrated to Miami, Florida. As a current junior, she is majoring in Biochemistry at the University of Miami as a recipient of the Stamps Scholarship, awarded for academic merit, strong leadership potential, and exceptional character.

On-campus, she is involved in sustainability efforts, having been a part of the Green Committee for two years and having served as the Fall 2019 Office of Sustainability intern. She has established the Food Alert system, which funnels leftover event catering to food-insecure students and hopes to expand this program during the next academic year.

In the community, she is involved with the local nonprofit Exchange for Change, which organizes writing and literature classes in South Florida prisons. In Fall 2018, she worked as the Editor-in-Chief of Perspectives, a journal of epistolary conversations between students at Everglades Correctional Institution and the University of Miami, to heighten awareness about mass incarceration. She joined the Exchange for Change administrative team as an office intern in the summer of 2019, where she standardized codes and keys for students’ course history and created an automatic transcript generator system that serves over 1,000 incarcerated students. Furthermore, Paula is interested in a career in public service and/or nonprofit, especially in the areas of prison reform, sustainability, and environmental justice.

As a CHCI participant, Paula hopes to gain insight into the power of the legislative process to create positive social change.