Hello. I’m Sara Leonor Clemente. I would like to major in Spanish, concentrating on the Literature and Culture aspects rather than purely Language. Additionally, I plan on getting the Human Rights certificate. I also work at the Queens Central YW&YMHA as an afterschool counselor on weekdays. A lot of the children that I work with are first generation Americans, much like myself so I always hear interesting stories from many of them.
I recently turned 19 years old, while vacationing in Panamá with some friends. I really love traveling and getting to know different people from various cultures, which is why I decided to take a trip to Panamá in the first place. I was born in Stamford, Connecticut in 1995. About a week after I was born my mom took me back to her natal city, Cuenca, in Ecuador, where I grew up until I was 6 years old. My mom originally came to the United States to visit a friend but later realized that she had more opportunities here than she did in Ecuador. So, she soon became the first and only member of our family to move from Ecuador and come to the United States. Since then I have lived in Jackson Heights, Queens. I went to IS145 and then Townsend Harris High School in Flushing. Fortunately, I am quite in touch with my heritage and try to go to Ecuador every summer.
Hi! My name is Emily Stone, I am 19 years old and I am (hopefully) pursuing a major in music and a minor in legal studies and/or public policy. I am the lone Jersey girl in the Macaulay @ Hunter Class of 2017, and hail from the township of Teaneck, a suburb only fifteen minutes away from the George Washington Bridge (by car). I deferred a year after high school and spent my gap year traveling, studying and working on a Kibbutz in Israel. I love to sing, and am a member of Macaulay’s acapella group, the Macaulay Triplets. I am also passionate about politics, particularly as it pertains to the Middle East. My long-term professional goal is to connect youth from across enemy, political, and social line using music (or more specifically, singing) as a form of dialogue.
As for my story, I am a Modern Orthodox Jew of both Ashkenazic and Sephardic descent. My father’s ancestors are from Eastern Europe, while my mother’s are from Aleppo, Syria. Much of my father’s side has lived in New York for generations (the last of the immigrants came before World War II), while both sets of my mother’s grandparents came with their families in the 1920s, and settled in Brooklyn with the rest of the Syrian Jewish community. My mother ended up going to Binghamton, leaving behind the traditional, and somewhat insular community in which she grew up, and after meeting my father on a singles retreat, married and had three daughters. With the birth of their second daughter, they moved from Brooklyn to Northern New Jersey. I am the youngest.
