Miranda Rodriguez Cruz is a Mexican student living in New York City. She participated in Columbia University’s Freedom & Citizenship program in 2024 and graduated from Newtown High School in 2025. Her favorite reading from F&C was “A Talk to Teachers” by James Baldwin. Miranda now attends Hamilton College as

Alba Martinez graduated from Hugh M. Cummings High School in Burlington, North Carolina, in 2025. She was part of the Elon Freedom Scholars program where she developed a website to assist under-resourced students. Passionate about learning languages, Alba is trilingual and self-taught in Portuguese. As a C-STEP participant, she plans