Since elementary school Carina has had a strong interest in government in one way or another. Whether it was memorizing the names of all the US presidents or reading about the civil war or women’s suffrage movement, Carina has always been a “nerd”. At BLS, Carina found her home in the Junior Classical League. Over the course of her junior year she served as the MassJCL Parliamentarian where she proposed amendments to the state constitution and ran the state elections. She also ran for and was elected to the position of President for her senior year. Besides being a member of JCL, Carina is also a member of the Boston Mayor’s Youth Council. It was on the council where she first started to develop an interest in government beyond what was in history books. At the monthly Youth Council meetings, Carina learned about different parts of city government and about the importance of advocacy and civic engagement. During her junior year she also had an internship in Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu’s office where she learned just how much work actually goes on behind the scenes in public service. There’s a lot of answering phone calls from constituents in addition to showing up at events and passing legislation. However, showing up twice a week for a couple of hours wasn’t enough. Carina wanted to learn more about public service, so she applied to the Ward Fellowship. When she saw that the Inspector General’s Office was one of the sponsor sites, she knew that was where she wanted to be working. Having taken AP Comparative Government this year and having learned how high levels of corruption and low levels of transparency cause democracies to deteriorate, Carina thought that having a government office that specifically investigates the waste of public funds in addition to corruption and fraud within the government was especially important. This summer she is looking forward to learning more about different divisions of government and forms of public service while hopefully discovering more about her own interests within the public sector.