Marisa Gracias

Marisa is a sophomore at Georgetown University in the School of Foreign Service, pursuing international politics and pre-law, and has an interest in psychology. At university, Marisa is a member of the Blue and Gray Tour Guide Society, giving school tours to prospective students, and is the Internal Operations Director of Georgetown’s Social Innovation Public Service Fund.

Marisa’s work experiences reflect her interest in psychology. She interned at Northwestern University’s PADLab. As a research intern, she encoded data and wrote protocol-oriented programming code. She transcribed interviews with children, where they were asked to use their imagination to think of as many ways as possible to use a sheet of paper. She analyzed information on aggression and bullying in children, and created an in-house coding protocol used by undergraduate students to code the transcriptions and turn the children’s qualitative answers into dataset numbers to analyze. As a final project, she presented before 20 academics on both the new coding protocol and her latest academic research.

For the past three years, she has continued to work with two neuroscientists on a study pending publication: “The Effects of Attachment Style and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on Responses to Stressful Vignettes.” The research includes questions that measure the participants’ social support, financial stresses, loneliness and other factors.

Marisa also interned at Vedder Price Law Firm in Chicago. Being assigned to work pro bono assisting families seeking asylum from Honduras gave her exposure into these difficult situations. To best advise the family, she consulted the 800-page National Immigration Justice Center Procedural Manual for Asylum Representation, and translated the family member’s statements from Spanish. She also helped organize the law firm’s recertification for associate attorneys.

Marisa attended Eagle Hill School and received the full International Baccalaureate Diploma. She was recognized with the Mathematics Achievement Award and Headmasters Cup Award. Marisa was also selected as the senior class commencement speaker.

At age 15, Marisa presented at a TEDx conference discussing the struggles faced by neurodivergent students: “Rethinking How We Paint Learning Differences.” She spoke on how to reframe the general public’s perception on learning differences, celebrating diversity instead of pathologizing such difficulty. Having been diagnosed with two learning differences at age seven, she is a staunch advocate for neurodivergent students.

Marisa is fluent in Spanish and enjoys volleyball, baking desserts and hanging out with friends. She danced with the Joffrey Ballet (Chicago) in the Pre-Professional Program for a decade, teaching her both discipline and teamwork. She has an empathetic heart and keen interest in making a difference in the adolescent mental health crisis.