Carly Frieders
Peggy McGee
Carly Frieders was one of two scholarship winners in the newly formed scholarship program in 2016. At the top of her class at Walden Grove High School, Carly was involved in many volunteer activities while in high school focusing on projects that supported her goal to eventually become an attorney.
A triplet, Carly studied at Rice University where her favorite course was a graduate level seminar on the philosophy of emotions. She enjoyed this class because the philosophers they read challenged the common assumption that emotions are opposed to or get in the way of reasoning, and instead helped her think about the ways that our emotions actually express the way we reason about the world and ultimately show us what’s important in our lives.
While studying in Argentina, Carly took a “politics and law” course at a university in Buenos Aires. She reported that as a pre-law student, she found it fascinating to study court systems across different cultures.
Just as in high school, Carly was very involved in volunteer work and advocacy in college. As chair of the Houston Engagement Committee of Civic Duty at Rice, she regularly organized opportunities for students to help get out the vote with community organizations in Houston. In addition to her philosophy degree, Carly earned a Certificate in Civic Leadership. As part of the certificate program, she completed an internship with Mi Familia Vota, a civic engagement and immigration justice organization, coordinated a service-learning program for incoming students at Rice, and completed a capstone project with the racial justice group Texas Organizing Project.
For the next two years, she will be working as a client advocate at the Delaware Office of Defense Services through the Partners for Justice (PFJ) program. PFJ places recent college graduates in public defender’s offices across the country to provide non-legal advocacy services to individuals facing charges in the criminal justice system. As a client advocate, she will help clients access a variety of services (food stamps, physical and mental health care) and advocate for them if they have difficulties with employers, landlords, or court officials.
After her two-year term with PFJ ends, she plans to attend law school. She hopes to become a public service attorney and work in legal aid. Carly’s ultimate goal is to become a clinical law professor and run a legal clinic at a university so she can simultaneously serve low-income clients and teach law students.
Carly reported that in addition to the financial aspects of TWOQC’s scholarship, she found it wonderful to go to college knowing her local community was behind her. She enjoyed staying in touch with TWOQC throughout her college education and hopefully beyond!
Because COVID-19 has resulted in the cancelation of the Javelina Hoedown, the primary source of funds to enable TWOQC to provide scholarships, the club would deeply appreciate donations to TWOQC’s Scholarship Fund. Donations will enable them to provide scholarships to deserving students like Carly, who will eventually make a positive difference in the world.