A deep breath. Limbs loose, muscles warmed up, and sneakers tied on tight, Mya Walters ‘20 takes off running.
A member of Le Moyne’s cross-country and track teams, she is no stranger to the challenges that accompany being a student athlete: 7am practices, recovering from injuries, and balancing a dedication to her sport with classes and other obligations. However, the lessons she learns from running stay with her long after she crosses the finish line.
“Running can be a metaphor for life in general,” she says. “Understanding the meaning of commitment, throughout the good and the bad, is a really big thing I’ve learned.”
That deep sense of commitment characterizes everything Walters does.
As a dual psychology and political science major enrolled in the Integral Honors Program, she is focusing her Honors thesis on how political fear affects gender discrimination. Through this project, she hopes to advocate for gender equality. “We have to have women equal and in power in order to make the world a better place,” she says.
Walters’ support for women in leadership roles extends beyond just the boundaries of her thesis. During the spring of her sophomore year in 2018, she got a glimpse into the government through her role as a political staffer intern in Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s Syracuse office. Senator Gillibrand announced her campaign for the 2020 presidential election in March of 2019. “It’s so funny,” Walters laughs, “because a lot of my professors asked me, ‘So, is she running for president?’ And this was last spring, so I had no idea.”
Her daily tasks of answering phone calls from constituents, as well as reading and sorting letters from a variety of sources, afforded Walters an up-close-and-personal look into how to make a difference in her community. She was particularly impacted by the time when a retired social worker came to the office with refugees who were seeking asylum. Walters’ supervisor worked with them via an interpreter to make sure they were given the documentation they needed and a place to stay.
This lesson of helping those in need wasn’t lost on Walters, who went on to found the Food Recovery Network at Le Moyne. This network packages leftover food from the dining hall and donates it to the Syracuse Samaritan Center for use in their soup kitchen. She credits her friend, Katie Markstein ‘18, with initiating the organization’s establishment at Le Moyne, and says that with Dominick Battaglia ‘20 as the network’s current vice president, they have been able to minimize food waste while reducing hunger in the community.
“It’s kind of my baby, in a sense, and I want it to do well after I graduate,” she says of the Food Recovery Network. Walters has plans to make the organization more prominent on campus, including collaborating with existing clubs and student groups.
In part, her strong interest in social justice was inspired by her time here at Le Moyne. Through classes on international human rights and international criminal law, she found that “it was very interesting to talk about social justice through the lens of helping people in a global sense. You realize you have to know more about the world than just the small part that you live in.”
While Walters has not narrowed her interests toward a specific career path, one thing is certain: her commitment to serving others has not yet run its course.
“Ultimately, we’re here on this earth for a certain amount of time and I think if we help others, that gives more purpose to our lives,” she says.