Catching up with Liore Klein
Time sure does fly by, doesn’t it? Can nearly three years have passed since Liore Klein stood on the dais at the 2007 Huntington High School commencement exercises as one of the top seniors?
Ms. Klein is now a junior at the University of Pennsylvania. “So far, it has been a fantastic experience,” she said last week. “I am a double major studying political science and ‘health and societies,’ which is basically public health. I have taken some fantastic classes, and am fascinated by everything I am learning.”
At Huntington, Ms. Klein was a “commended student” in the National Merit competition and an Advanced Placement Scholar. She was also a member of four honor societies and earned the County Executive Award for Public Service, Political Action Committee Award and the Tri-Community & Youth Agency Award.
This semester the Huntington grad is enrolled in Comparative Medicine, Health of Populations, Politics of Food, Spanish Texts and Contexts (a history course taught in Spanish) and an independent study course on international development.
“Outside of schoolwork, I have gotten involved in a bunch of great things on campus,” Ms. Klein said. “I am very active in Jewish life, and I consider Penn's Hillel to be my second home. I am also involved in a group called Focus First, which helps to provide vision care for preschoolers in the Philadelphia area. The week before Thanksgiving, I was involved in organizing Give Kids Sight Day, a project of the Philadelphia Vision Care Coalition. We saw over 1,200 kids at two sites, fitting almost a third of them with glasses for the first time.”
Despite a full course load, Ms. Klein is holding down two jobs on campus. “I work at a student-run coffee shop, which has shown me up close what goes into running a successful business,” she said. “I have been working for the past nine months as a research intern at the Center for High Impact Philanthropy, a research center that helps give philanthropists the tools to donate their money for the greatest social impact. Overall, working at the Center has been incredible, and staff there has been really supportive in helping me grow as a researcher and giving me more direction for what I want to do later on.”
In the spring she will be far away from Penn’s Philadelphia campus. “Next semester, I am going to be studying in Buenos Aires, Argentina for about six months, and I cannot be more excited,” Ms. Klein said. “I am going to be living with a host family and studying at one of four universities while I'm there. This will be my first time living abroad for an extended period of time, which will be great preparation for the future, as I plan to go work abroad for a period of time after I graduate.”
The Huntington alum expects to be awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in May 2011and then pursue a Master’s in Public Health “and eventually work in the non-profit sector in the areas of global and domestic public health,” she said. “I am really interested in what can be done to reduce health disparities in the U.S. and abroad and I intend to work towards making tangible changes in those areas.”
All graphics, photographs, and text appearing on the Huntington Public Schools home page and subsequent official web pages are protected by copyright. Redistribution or commercial use is prohibited without express written permission. Comments or Questions? email the Public Information Office