Pierrce Holmes is an MPP candidate at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University concentrating in Poverty Alleviation. He was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, which has shaped his perspective greatly due to its character and diverse population. He is focused on pathways to racial equity and justice above all else, aiming to help black people thrive in all aspects of life through policy and community strength. A Summa Cum Laude graduate of Stonehill College (2019), he was a Communications and Philosophy double major. He was a SURE scholar, which helped provide him with the chance to spend a summer working with a professor researching the rhetoric of Civil Rights Era monuments and locations. He started his graduate school career at the University of Pennsylvania Law School before realizing that was not the path for him. He then spent his time before Heller as a special education teacher at Chestnut middle school in Springfield. He serves as the co-chair of the MPP Student Association, working closely with MPP faculty to relay and address the needs of students. He currently works part time as a graduate assistant to the Equity, Inclusion and Diversity office at Heller, tasked with helping to attune Heller to the needs of students of marginalized identities, while also working to diversify syllabi and interact with the administration. In his free time, Pierrce enjoys basketball, reading, music, and writing (raps especially). This summer, Pierrce hopes to gain experience working with an organization focused on advancing racial-justice-focused policy in a broad sense, as he narrows his focus.