Claudia Saavedra moved from Chile at a young age and grew up in the small town of Hopatcong, New Jersey. Claudia and her family moved to the United States in hopes for a better life to achieve the American Dream in the land of opportunities. Her parents always instilled in her and her two siblings, their belief in education being the key to success and a way out of poverty. Claudia took and searched for every opportunity to make the most out of her education. Her strong work ethic led her to graduate at the top of her high school class that qualified her for the NJ Stars scholarship, which provided her the opportunity to attend community college for free as a first-generation college. She currently holds an Associate degree from County College of Morris in Public Administration with honors. Her accolades then allowed her to be one of the 20 transfers students selected from an international pool of applicants to be a part of the Honors Living Learning Community at Rutgers University-Newark, where Claudia currently attends on a full-ride scholarship and studies Public Administration.
Currently, she serves on her Community College Board of Trustees as the Alumni Trustee and represents 8,000+ students. In high school, she landed a full scholarship to a College Access Summer program at New York University that certified her as a College Access Ambassador. Attending this program in high school, evoked her passion of college access, especially for underrepresented students. At the age 17, she conducted workshops to help underrepresented students through the admissions process. She currently interns with the Office of Undergraduate & Graduate Admissions, alongside the Assistant Provost and Dean of Admissions of Rutgers University and is in the efforts of creating a College Access Program at the university. With encouragement from her friends and family, she is in the route of becoming a social entrepreneur in which she is working on the creation of a mobile/ web app that will scale traditional college access programs and revolutionize the way college access works. In her free time, Claudia can be found working on her college access blog, hiking, kayaking, and on the tennis court.