Sophie is a student in the College of Arts and Sciences studying Political Science and Communication. She grew up in West Chester, Pennsylvania in a household where her Republican father and Democratic mother kept politics off the dinner table, an early lesson that silence around civic life doesn’t make it simpler, only harder to navigate. That experience shaped her core interest: understanding how political systems actually work, and how to talk about them in ways that invite people in rather than shut them out.
At Penn, Sophie works to strengthen democratic participation through policy, research, and civic engagement. She serves as an elected member of the Undergraduate Assembly and on the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, where she focuses on improving student life and strengthening communication between students and administration. As a PORES Fellow with the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies, she archives and analyzes digital political advertising data to better understand how media shapes voter behavior. She has also led policy consulting work through Wharton Undergraduates in Public Policy, including a collaboration with the Pennsylvania Governor’s Office on statewide food insecurity.
Sophie is drawn to the intersection of political communication, data, and public policy, particularly the question of who participates in democracy and why. Before Penn, she organized voter registration drives across 200+ Pennsylvania high schools, represented youth civic leaders at the White House, and served on the Girls Advisory Board of The Fund for Women and Girls, where she allocated over $45,000 in grants to local nonprofits. As an SNF Paideia Fellow, she hopes to deepen her understanding of civil discourse across differences and develop the tools to build spaces where people can think and disagree openly: on campus, nationally, and eventually abroad.
Undergraduate Fellow, Class of 2029