Samantha Taylor

Position
2021 - ILLINOIS
Bio/Description

During her senior year, Samantha has been the president of the Black Student Union and co-president of Peer Multicultural Educators at Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. As president of these organizations, she led conversations and town halls on topics ranging from colorism to police brutality to what racism looks like in higher education. As co-president of Peer Multicultural Educators, she founded Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy's first annual diversity conference, Chasing Equity, where students from around the country were invited to learn about how they can make their campuses more equitable. She has also worked alongside the Great Lakes Equity center to collect and analyze institutional data and equity policies to make her campus more inclusive. She is an activist who is extremely passionate about social equity and advocacy and working to create a future that is representative and inclusive of everyone. Some of her favorite accomplishments include creating her own publication called Blackbox that celebrates and shares Black culture and the Black experience, having a feature segment on NBC News as a young activist, spending Tuesday afternoons teaching public policy and activism to underclassmen, and speaking alongside Dr. Angela Davis in a fireside chat. She will be continuing her education this fall at the University of Chicago with a full ride to study economics and public policy on the pre-law track.