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Miami Palmetto High School senior Penelope Murray is co-president of Palmetto’s Women’s Union.
She’s been a member since her freshman year and on the leadership board since her sophomore year. This is her second year as co-president.
One of her functions early on was the Women Crush Wednesday series, creating social media posts about women who deserved recognition.
Those women included Sarah Blakely founder of Spanx, Mayor Karyn Cunningham and Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
“Also, Ketanji Brown Jackson, her history as a circuit judge and how she went to our school,” she says. “I saw her in person when she came to our school.”
She says they have an extensive list of things to work on this year.
“First one on our radar – we are going to be doing a school beautification project,” she says. “We are creating, by our sponsor’s room, we are creating a garden and painting rocks. So we can contribute to the atmosphere of the school.”
Murray says the club is really a club where they try to make a safe space for women.
“We like to host discussions of different issues that affect us,” she says. “There are things affecting the rights of women. There are great things happening for women and some terrible things happening to women.”
The members come together to talk about how they feel about the issues. The club leadership provides the girls with resources to learn more.
“Just different sources of information so they can form their opinions and do what’s right for them,” she says. “That’s one of the main things we do is try to educate these girls on what’s going on. Laws and policies that affect us, our bodies.”
Murray is a champion athlete. She’s on the varsity badminton team. Her sophomore year and junior year she and her doubles partner won the county championships in doubles and helped the Palmetto team win the county championship as well.
Murray was named to the All Miami-Dade Badminton First Team. She’s also team manager.
“I design the jerseys and the different shirts and merch for the team,” she says. “If we do fundraisers, I’ll be doing those. I make sure everyone has their paperwork on time and I run the social media.”
Murray is secretary of the photography club. She is into photography because her grandmother is a photographer.
“Since I was little, I was like, can I use your camera?” she says. “I would take pictures of my dolls. I got serious my sophomore year.”
This year she’s in Advanced Placement Photography.
“I take portraits and use double exposure and weird lighting,” she says. “I’m trying to see how the use of double exposure and facial manipulation in digital photography can represent disassociation between the mind and body in people with mental health issues.”
The photos developed out of a project she did last year about societal views on beauty.
She’s a member of Women of Tomorrow, a peer educator for the Health Information Project, a member of the National Honor Society, and the National Art Honor Society.
This summer, she was accepted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Youth Leadership Institute from a pool of almost 5000 applicants. That took her to USC for a weeklong intensive that included learning about the college application process, how to manage finances and careers.
Her plan is to pursue a double major in psychology and cinematic arts.
Her college list includes the University of Florida, Florida State University, Duke University, Vanderbilt, USC, and Yale.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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