Sam is a senior originally from Alamo, California majoring in Public Policy and minoring in Environmental Studies. Besides her mental health platform Resilient Voices she is a counselor at Troy Camp and a member of Alpha Delta Pi. Resilient Voices is a website meant to normalize mental health conversations & providing students with the resources that work for them. Some of these resources include an overview of different mental illnesses, meditation tips exercise tips, as well as blogs to share other’s mental health experiences She partnered with LavaLab, USC’s student-run startup incubator to help aid her in the creation of her platform. The website addresses the mental health crisis, which occurs on college campuses. Samantha decided to start Resilient Voices, because “Since high school, I have always been interested in mental health and mental illness. It is something that was very stigmatized in my community and that is also stigmatized at USC. I want to create a safe space where people can feel comfortable. We need to be normalizing mental health resources so fewer people will suffer the loss of a loved one.”
Her project was born out of a global pandemic, which she told us “was challenging because I had never created my project in that way so I started to reach out to people in organizations I am in. Her main goal with the platform is to normalize mental health conversations within our generation and provide an outlet for storytelling.” Some fun facts about her are that her role models are Zendaya and Michelle Obama and she also has learned how to surf over this last semester. Her advice to future Trojans is: “Don’t be afraid to take risks. If you are passionate enough about something just be willing to take the risk because it will happen for you.” You can submit a blog to her website at https://www.resilient-voices.com/blog-submission.
