Camden Robertson ’23 is busy.
It’s her final year at Pace as a double major in peace and justice studies and political science. She’s minoring in creative writing, a member of the Pforzheimer Honors College, and a 2022 United Nations Millennium Fellow. She helped bring affordable online healthcare to students on campus through a healthcare startup, has been a Peer Advocate Against Sexual Assault for three years, and she won a Girard Cannon Award for Poetry in 2021.
Oh, and did we mention she’s graduating early?
Her packed schedule has had no negative impact on her enthusiasm for the work she’s doing, however. In fact, she credits her time at Pace for her passion for equity. “I think my work in peace and justice studies have really informed my interests as a student and my eventual career path,” she says. “Peace and justice studies is a field uniquely situated at assessing social justice issues and inequalities in the present day and creating a more sustainable vision for the future. I think the research I have done has really put me in touch with the social justice issues I’m activated on outside of school.”
I think the research I have done has really put me in touch with the social justice issues I’m activated on outside of school.
Camden was recently featured in a Forbes article, where she discussed her passion for affordable, online healthcare for students and how her work at Caraway, an independent healthcare start-up, is helping bring that to fruition. “Caraway is a start-up healthcare company specifically for women and people who were assigned female at birth in college,” Camden explains.
The outside work she did with Caraway went hand-in-hand with her work as one of Pace’s Peer Advocates Against Sexual Assault (PAASA), and she utilized Pace’s Office of Sexual and Interpersonal Wellness to help spread the word. “We went to a Reproductive Justice 101 panel and spoke to the importance of accessible healthcare, specifically online. We came up with a toolkit for abortion resources for students in New York City,” she says. “Pace students are extremely activated by social justice, so our goal was to create events that spoke to that.”
Camden has experience creating this type of programming through her work as a member of PAASA. She and five other students provide confidential support to members of the Pace Community who have experienced interpersonal violence. Camden says, “Our other responsibility is to create workshops and events around healthy relationships, bystander intervention, consent, hookup culture, and more.”
Pace students are extremely activated by social justice, so our goal was to create events that spoke to that.
As a UN Millennium Fellow, she focused on UN Sustainable Development Goals three (good health and wellbeing) and five (gender equality) by creating a bystander intervention toolkit for individual use and through the Office of Sexual and Interpersonal Wellness. She also gained political experience working with a political consulting firm that recruits progressive women to run for office in her home state of Connecticut.
These experiences are not only informing her work with Caraway and PAASA, but also helping open paths for her future career. “I’ve been lucky in my undergrad experience to have a lot of work with nonprofit membership orgs and advocacy and that is where I want to continue to be, but maybe not in the capacity that I have been in the past,” she says. “Where I really want to focus my attention now is research and academia. My plan is to take a year after graduation to work and then go back to school and eventually get my PhD. That experience of doing the undergraduate research experience really in depth about something I was really passionate about solidified my interest in research. That’s where I want to end up.”
It’s the support I’ve had here at Pace that has given me the motivation to do the work that I’m doing.
Camden has managed to fit a lot into her three years of undergraduate education, and she believes that tight deadline is part of why she has felt so driven. “I’ve felt the drive to fit as much as I can in the three years. Sometimes I find myself wishing I had that additional year to just continue to be at Pace and work with my network here.”
But that’s really where she feels the credit is due, the network she has built right here at Pace. “My drive really comes from the network that is available to me at Pace and in New York City. Specifically, my faculty in my majors. These are a group of professors that are so motivated by student need and passion,” Camden says. “It’s the support I’ve had here at Pace that has given me the motivation to do the work that I’m doing.”
Wherever her passions take her after graduation, Camden’s advocacy for the wellness of her peers will certainly leave a lasting mark on the Pace Community that so inspired her.
For more information on PAASA and other sexual and interpersonal wellness resources, visit The Office of Sexual and Interpersonal Wellness. Learn more about Pace's Wellness initiative.
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