Karla Lopez-Rosa, a senior from Rider University, has been accepted into the New Jersey Governor’s Hispanic Fellows Program.

The Program is applicable only to students at two or four year university programs of Hispanic descent that live in New Jersey. It seeks to bring in the best students to help prepare them for a professional workplace, seeking to train them with skills ranging from negotiation to time management.

Taking place over eight weeks, the Program offers both hands-on learning alongside regular classroom style learning. Several guest presentations will be given by leading professionals alongside other unique opportunities to build these necessary skills.

Lopez-Rosa is a political science major with a double minor in homeland security policy and Spanish. She is also the president of Rider University’s political science club. 

Her reasoning for joining the Program was influenced by an interest in the impact immigration has on the Latino/Hispanic community.

"My role with the organization impacted me personally because I was able to see what it was like for immigrant families in their need of health care, education, and legal assistance," Lopez-Rosa said to Rider University.

"I believe mentorship is a huge aspect of how we grow as individuals,” Lopez-Rosa added. "The Governor's Hispanic Fellows Program provides those mentors that are of Hispanic/Latinx background like myself and people that want to see every one of us succeed. I am grateful to have been selected to be part of a program that wants to help Hispanic/Latinx leaders of tomorrow."

Lopez-Rosa has interned with the U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman and currently seeks to attend law school after finishing her BA in order to pursue her goals in aiding marginalized, underrepresented, and under-resourced communities. 

This Program will expand upon what she learned in a previous internship with the Latin American Legal Defense & Education Fund in Trenton in 2021.

The New Jersey Center for Hispanic Policy, Research and Development has been operating the Governor’s Hispanic Fellows Program for 33 years and has graduated over 800 Latino and Hispanic students since then.