From Barney to Bryn Mawr
Rose Pierre-Louis’ personality is as loud as her hair. Last month the 21-year-old had blond-colored hair before changing it to its now grey color. She said her creative expression of her hair is one way of saying she’s not afraid to stand up and speak up for what she believes in.
Having gone to all-women’s college called Bryn Mawr, right outside of Philadelphia, Louis felt it was empowering being around other driven women especially through the Posse Leadership scholarship where she and a group of 10 students supported each other through graduation.
“I don’t have to be the loudest person in the room, but I know how to express myself so that people listen to what I’m saying when I need them to,” Pierre-Louis said. “I credit that to being in a single-sex environment that encouraged me to use my voice in an impactful way, even in the face of misogyny which was very apparent when I took co-ed classes.”
Pierre-Louis has been at CPBN for just under two months as a Newman’s Own Fellow and has been working on updating the organization’s website. She’s also working on a year-long project to create tools that allow middle-school teachers to use more public media in the classroom.
Public media is what helped Louis learn English at an early age. She was born in Haiti and moved to Boston when she was just five years old. Only speaking Haitian Creole at the time, she learned English by watching reruns of Barney. It was one of the first challenges she overcame and it didn’t stop her from earning her college degree in English.
As a child, Louis’ mother worked as a nurse’s assistant in Hospice and would often come home with stories about her patients. This inspired Pierre-Louis to want to help others. In college, she helped Alzheimer’s patients at a nursing home. Now, she hopes to inspire students to voice their opinions and speak up for what is important, a guideline that she continues to live by.