This is only the beginning

It's been said that home is where the heart is. For Jamal Holtz '20, he has lent a bit of his heart to each of the places he has lived. The Washington DC native is about as proud of his hometown as one could be. After all, it's his ambition to become mayor of the city one day.

For the last four years, Holtz has called Rochester his home, and from the moment he set foot on campus, he knew he wanted to make an impact here.

"I always said, when I step onto any community," says Holtz, "I make it a community that I live in, not a community that I just come for four years and leave."

After starting out as a political science major, he realized that while this connected to his interest in politics, it wasn't fully inclusive of his vision for community engagement and the issues that he saw impacting society.

Like so many students that come here for the open curriculum, he created his own major. He called his program social justice and public policy, and he looked at it as an opportunity to become immersed in the community he was now living in, interacting with everyone from school kids to senior citizens. He found himself researching issues like mass incarceration, while continuing to travel the country in pursuit of his vision for making DC the nation's 51st state in order to create more equity for the city in its representation.

He used this academic freedom to find a way to connect to as many of his interests as he could, while learning the principles of leadership that would be needed for a career in politics. By the time he reached the end of his third year, he was ready to take the reins of leadership in student government, being elected as the Students' Association president for his final year at the University, after having already served as vice president.

He took this role as seriously as any he held while in Rochester, forming the first of its kind presidential advisory council, made up of students from all different parts of the University to bridge the gap between students and their governing body. Through this input, he worked to address issues like the need for a ride system for students to safely travel off campus on nights and weekends, an on-campus ambulance service, the question of whether or not to arm public safety officers, among other things that students raised as areas of importance.

Holtz found his stride in this role, becoming a presence all over campus. He was there to welcome Sarah Mangelsdorf on the day she was first introduced as the University's eleventh president, helping first-year students on move-in day, speaking at Convocation, at President Mangelsdorf's inauguration, and countless other events throughout the year.

While he didn't expect to spend his final weeks as a University of Rochester student away from campus due to a pandemic, he is soaking up every last moment before graduating. As he moves on to his job at LINK Strategic Partners in Washington, he does not see this as an ending, but a beginning.

"As my days wind down, I've been appreciating literally every hour that I get to serve and every hour I get to be a student. I will always find myself coming back here, contributing to the university and figuring out ways that I can make impact beyond just being a student here."

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