Working With the Best of the Best

This week’s blog is a reprint from the May ’21 issue of the USF Magazine. Laura Flores ’18, our former USF in D.C. Fellow, is one of USF’s 30 under 30 graduates who are making their mark on furthering Leo’s legacy. Flores was a part of our 2017 cohort, working full-time as a legislative and press intern for Senator Feinstein. While working in D.C., she honed analytic and writing skills that helped her to become a finalist for the National Media Scholars Competition. Out of a couple hundred teams that were entered, Flores was part of the final five and traveled to D.C. for an expense paid week of meetings and networking. As a 2018 Washington Media Scholar, Flores was also featured in the Washington Post. Read on to learn more about her and why being a part of the USF in D.C. program was influential in her post grad experience.

As a kid growing up in California’s Inland Empire, Laura Flores would listen to her family discuss politics over the dinner table. She wasn’t quite sure how government worked, but she knew she wanted to be a part of it.

Flores credits the USF in DC program with cementing her desire to work in politics. She interned for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and studied with USF Professor Ken Goldstein, a mentor who encouraged her to make politics her profession.

Now the digital project manager for NextGen America, a nonprofit that encourages young people to vote, the politics major and media studies minor also spent time on the national presidential campaign trail working for Elizabeth Warren.

“All of a sudden, I was working with the best of the best. These were presidential campaign veterans, and I was working alongside them for 10, 12, 14 hours a day. It was very intense, very high stakes.”

Read the full USF’s 30 Under 30 article here.