Sophie Szew (she/they) is a Los Angeles-born mental health activist, writer, and public speaker. She was a youth leader at MTV’s Mental Health Youth Action Forum at the White House, where she shared her story with President Biden and helped guide the administration on how to best serve the needs of youth in the mental healthcare system. Sophie is also a 3-time intern at the U.S. House of Representatives and an internationally recognized poet, winning the 2021 Woorilla Poetry Prize and serving as an inaugural poet for Mayor Karen Bass. She has advised numerous organizations, including Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation, Mental Health America, and the California Mental Health Consortium. As a first-year student at Stanford University, she hopes to double-major in American Studies with a concentration in mental healthcare justice and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, with two minors in Human Rights and Creative Writing. As an eating disorder survivor and proud Jewish Latina, Sophie combines their own experiences with injustice brought about by mental healthcare inequity with her passion for writing, advocacy, and leadership to uplift the voices of those with lived experiences and fight for the systemic destigmatization of marginalized bodies, and is very excited to do so as a member of NAMI’s NNG!
