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Miami Palmetto High School senior Amy-Grace Shapiro has worked hard as a volunteer over her high school career, already earning almost 1500 hours by the start of her senior year.
“Right now, I serve as one of the officers at Volunteering Miami,” she says. “I started off as a community outreach coordinator. It does a really great job of connecting our volunteers to organizations.”
However, Shapiro wants to help the organization do even better and is now the Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officer.
“My chief mission is to make volunteerism accessible to all,” she says. “I like to reach out to
organizations and ask them for DEI statements. And I like to reach out to the schools as well.”
She and her board work to reach out to schools that might not have as much access to volunteer opportunities. Board members are asked to reach out to five different schools each.
Shapiro likes to volunteer for issues that she is passionate about. One of those organizations she works with is Students Demand Action Against Gun Violence Miami. She’s the chapter lead.
As editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, she took the knowledge she gained by working with Students Demand Action and wrote an editorial about the current gun environment.
“It was about how my future is more important than guns,” she says. “It was a story from me about my belief about gun violence, I never expected it to do so well but I never expected to get so much backlash.”
She says it was the first time she felt like she had a topic she was passionate about and she shared her opinion.
“I have another similar story in the works,” she says.
Last school year, she created the school’s literary magazine called The Golden Sun. The 30-page magazine came out in May and contained short stories, poems and art.
“We had been working since November,” she says. “It took a while, but it was very rewarding seeing it come to life.”
This year Shapiro is also president of the English National Honor Society. The club’s motto is: Where English Isn’t Just a Language. They had an event where they tried to figure out if it was said by Shakespeare or Taylor Swift.
“You’d be surprised how difficult it was,” she says.
She’s the head of school safety for Student Council.
“I’ve focused on the advocacy side and spreading awareness,” she says. “For the landmark school shootings, I’ve made over 2000 ribbons for students. It really sent a message.”
In 2022 she worked with candidate Democrat Annette Taddeo, who was initially running for
governor but switched to run for a congressional seat.
“I worked on citizenship drives with her,” Shapiro says. “Seeing how grateful they were made me emotional. Every Sunday morning, she held citizenship drives at different libraries.”
She plays varsity lacrosse. Last year she won the Comeback Player of the Year Award for returning to the team and playing well after sitting out her sophomore season with a torn meniscus.
This summer she spent several weeks at Oxford University in England studying law and politics. She was looking for something to do academically this summer and applied with the required personal statement.
“It was such a cool experience,” she says. “I flew out by myself didn’t know anybody and made some amazing friends. My roommate was from Canada.”
Currently. Shapiro plans to apply to the University of Florida. Florida State, Wake Forest, the University of North Carolina and Emory. She wants to double major in Political Science and Psychology on a Pre-Law track.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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