Meet Our Summer 2020 Intern Team
With the end of the academic year, we watch as our 2019-2020 student intern team of stellar University of Virginia students go on to new ventures . However, at the Center for Effective Lawmaking, we are excited to announce our new summer team of Batten students!
Please join us in welcoming the following interns to the CEL team. We look forward to their projects and hard work as they bring their unique talents to the Center’s vision.
Sherese Bonner is a University Achievement Award Scholar majoring in Public Policy and Leadership. Last summer, Sherese served as a Leonard D. Schaeffer Fellow in the City of Richmond Mayor’s Office where she performed research on carbon fees, solar energy, urban forests, and affordable housing. She’s passionate about education policy and pursues her interests in this area working as an Undergraduate Student Worker and Undergraduate Consultant for the University of Virginia Center for Teaching Excellence. Sherese is involved in a variety of extracurricular activities including the Fourth Year Trustees, VISAS Language Consultant Program, Batten Undergraduate Council Internal Committee, and Office of African American Affairs Grad Star program. Following graduation, Sherese hopes to earn a Master’s in Higher Education Administration and Policy.
Benjamin Feldman recently completed his B.S.Ed. in Kinesiology at University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and Human Development, and he is currently a MPP candidate at the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. His areas of policy interest include global development policy and public health policy, specifically social insurance and welfare. Upon his graduation from the Batten School, Benjamin would like to do public health or global development policy analysis. Before joining the CEL team, Benjamin interned at the Syrian Archive, a Berlin-based NGO, conducting open-source investigations and verifying incidents of human rights violations in the Syrian conflict.
Bridget Rizzo is from Winchester, VA and received a BA in Government with a Minor in Spanish from the University of Virginia in May 2020. Bridget is entering her second year as an Accelerated Master of Public Policy candidate at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and represents the Batten School on the university’s Honor Committee. Her policy areas of interest include civil rights advocacy, criminal justice reform, and the politics of identity. Bridget has served as a Senior Fellow at Democracy Summer PAC, an organization founded by Congressman Jamie Raskin to train high school and college students in grassroots organizing and campaigning. In her free time, Bridget volunteers at the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA as a dog walker. After obtaining her MPP, Bridget hopes to work in the nonprofit sector in Washington, DC and to eventually attend law school.
