Hello, my name is Michaela Shelton, and I am a New York City native (Bronx born and Manhattan raised) studying abroad in the United Kingdom. I have traveled a substantial distance to get where I am today. Let me take you back more than eight years ago, when I took my first leap of faith.
In 2017, I left New York City to study at Pomona College in Claremont, California–a small suburban town in Los Angeles County. The opportunity to attend Pomona was made possible through Pell Grant funding and generous need-based financial aid to support a first-generation, low-income student from a single-parent household. I pursued a degree in Politics with a concentration in comparative race (the study of how race and ethnicity are experienced across different groups and societies) and graduated with department honors. I authored an award-winning thesis on hair discrimination in the United States and South Africa and explored the tensions between individual rights and group rights in our democracy.
My studies in Politics took me abroad to South Africa in Spring 2020, where I learned about the history of apartheid and the sociopolitical transformations that followed after 1994.
