Human Rights Advocacy
Over the years, I have had the honor of leading human rights initiatives that have allowed me to apply my creative and academic skills to meaningful causes, including advocacy for North Korean human rights and promoting digital literacy among elders.
Through these efforts, I have used writing and advocacy to support underserved communities and bring greater attention to voices that are too often overlooked. Each initiative has deepened my empathy and reinforced my belief in writing as a powerful instrument for social change.
The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK)
As the head of both the Daily Press and social media outreach for the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), a leading think tank and NGO, I have led undergraduate and graduate interns in disseminating information on North Korea and its human rights crisis through the Daily Press, HRNK's daily news outlet, as well as across various social media platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. As my time as social media head, I have grown the Daily Press to 1,361 subscribers and HRNK's YouTube channel to 1,400 subscribers.
2025 North Korea International Human Rights Symposium
With the president of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), I coauthored the paper "The United States North Korean Human Rights Act (NKHRA) and the Canadian Human Rights in North Korea Act (M-94): A Brief Overview and the Way Forward." The president presented the paper at the 23rd North Korea International Human Rights Symposium, which was hosted by the National Human Rights Commission in October 2025. The symposium, as well as the content of my paper, was reported by The Chosun Daily, a South Korean newspaper with approximately 100,000 daily English readers. Read the full paper here. (For security reasons, my full name was withheld and replaced with the initials "L.S." (Liz Sim).)
The Milton Measure, Milton's Official Student Newspaper
As a Senior Editor and the Investigations Editor & Coordinator of The Milton Measure, I led the development of articles highlighting global social injustice. Some pieces I have written include "Closing the Elderly Divide Requires Collective Action," "Our Community Lacks Proper Awareness for Disabilities," and "Wary of Authoritarianism at Home, We Must Also Study Democratic Trends in Autocracies." I had the privilege of receiving three Laurence S. Persky Awards, Milton's highest journalism honor, for "Best News Writer" (2026), "Best News Story" (2026), and "Best Opinion Article, Milton Topic" (2025).
Magus Mabus, Milton's Official Art and Literary Magazine
As Editor-in-Chief of Magus Mabus, I have led the editorial board in rigorously selecting submissions for publication. As an editorial board, we have published issues that frequently feature works promoting peace and advocating for women's and LGBTQ+ rights. This year, we released a special issue with the theme of ___, aiming to use art and creative writing to amplify marginalized voices. Copies of the issue were distributed to Milton students and made available online for everyone in the world to access for free.
Senior Savvy
The idea of Senior Savvy, a website that teaches digital literacy to elders, first occurred to me when my grandpa told me about his struggles carrying out basic activities like calling a taxi or ordering food. The issue was that doing those things all required navigating his phone, with the world growing increasingly and rapidly digitized. For two years, I founded and designed Senior Savvy , a website that provides step-by-step tutorials on using digital technology, to address the digital divide between elders and the digitally experienced majority. See the website here.
I was also inspired to create Senior Savvy after volunteering weekly at the Simon C. Fireman Community, an elders' home in Randolph, MA. This is my fourth year volunteering for them.
The Senior Savvy Handbook
To make the tutorials in Senior Savvy easily portable and accessible to elders, I gathered the most common technology-related questions and created a physical handbook containing step-by-step guides on navigating digital technology. I distributed the copies to 200 residents of the Simon C. Fireman Community, an elders' home in Randolph, MA, and a Korean-translated copy to 100 elders in Seoul, South Korea. I also made the handbook available for free online to all elders worldwide.
Amnesty International
As the Club Head of Milton Academy's Amnesty International chapter, I led members in advocating for global social justice. In collaboration with The F-Word, Milton's feminist magazine, we published a literary issue titled "Women in Conflicts." We also organized a "Play for Peace" open mic night, in which performers ranging from poetry readers to piano players delivered performances that held messages of promoting peace and spreading free speech awareness.
Harvard Undergraduate GlobalWE
Selected as 1 of 6 High School Ambassadors of Harvard Undergraduate Global Women's Empowerment, I have conveyed GlobalWE's messages to youth in the US and beyond.
Five Loaves & Two Fish
Since 2021, as the English curriculum designer and lead teacher for Five Loaves & Two Fish, a Catholic volunteer organization, I designed a unique English program for socio-economically disadvantaged migrant students in China. Through the curriculum, students thoroughly studied the vocabulary and grammar of Peppa Pig episodes, culminating in students’ enactment of an entire episode by acting in English as the characters of the cartoon.
Both the curriculum I designed and I were featured by the newsletter of The Beijing Center (TBC), a leading nonprofit higher education organization and one of the largest research institutions in China. The article was published via WeChat, a prominent Chinese social media platform, but the TBC account has since been deleted on WeChat, along with the article in which I was featured. See this link for a screenshot from when the article was still there.