Courteney Smith was born on May 19, 1991, and she was joined three years later by her younger sister, Brittaney, in their home in the town of West Roxbury. A proud Irish Catholic, as a young girl Courteney attended Mass every weekend with her grandparents before joining them, and the rest of the extended family, for a traditional Sunday dinner. She attended Mount Alvernia Academy, a small parochial school with a rigorous academic requirement and from there she moved onto Boston Latin School in the seventh grade. As a rising senior, Courteney has been involved in many activities, clubs and sports over the past five years. She was a member of the BLS Girls Crew team and has performed with the Boston Latin Theatre Company every year. She is an active member of the Student Council and has held an officer position on the Model United Nations team for two years. She is looking forward to leading the team to many victories as President next year. Courteney is also a participant in the Public Declamation contests held every term at Boston Latin, and next year has been awarded the honor of being an exempt senior, making her automatically eligible to participate in each of the public speaking competitions.
Though she is committed to her extracurricular activities, Courteney also understands that she must remain dedicated to her studies and she was invited to join the National Honor Society in the winter of her junior year and received the Wellesley College book award for a student who is actively engaged in extracurricular activities and shows exemplary academic prowess.
Not only is Courteney involved in the school community, but she is also an active member of her neighborhood community. She has been a diligent student of Hyde Park’s Dance Academy for fifteen years, and has been involved in community events such as the yearly Roslindale and Hyde Park parades. Courteney also gives back to her neighborhood by volunteering as a Sunday School teacher in the St. Theresa’s Parish CCD Program. After her Confirmation in the spring of tenth grade, mandatory catechism classes had ended, but Courteney felt that she still had a lot to learn about her faith. She volunteered to teach a group of fourth graders about their religion and she has grown tremendously from the experience. She tries to instill a drive for righteousness within her students so that they too will grow up determined to make the world a better place.
After graduating from the Boston Latin School in June of 2009, Courteney hopes to attend a very competitive college and double major in International Relations and Political Science, with a focus on the Middle East. She is looking forward to learning at least three languages while at college, including Arabic and French. After college, Courteney plans to attend an academically rigorous law school and study international law. She would like to following up this study with a career in the United Nations, working to stop human trafficking.
When Courteney was eleven, her five year old cousin came to live with her family as a foster child. When she first arrived, she was still traumatized from the home she had been living in, and the home she was placed in by DSS was not much better. This was the incident that spurred Courteney’s desire to work in public service, because she wanted to make sure that every child who had suffered a harrowing experience in one home would not have to suffer another one in a different home.