By Steve Sears

23-year-old Ifeoma White-Thorpe is a 2L at Harvard Law School. But Harvard was not the only Ivy League school she was accepted to. All eight came knocking, as did Stanford University when she applied to college in 2017. She chose the Crimson of Harvard, and ended up majoring in Government and minoring in Chemistry with a language citation in Igbo.

“I had a dream idea of what I wanted my educational journey to look like, and that really encompassed both professional and personal growth,” White-Thorpe says. “And so, I would say that I think that my experience while at Harvard College was one that spoke to the fruits of that.” 

White-Thorpe has accomplished much in her young life, including winning the National SELMA Speech and essay competition, hosted in part by Paramount Pictures, at the age of 15; that essay is still on display at the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia in the dedication and exhibit area of the Selma March, referred to commonly as Bloody Sunday. White-Thorpe says, “There is a display with my speech, where people who go to visit the museum can listen to it and read it.”

Now White-Thorpe is planning on a career in law, and also is part of a few other endeavors. 

White-Thorpe grew up in Denville (where her parents still reside), and attended Lakeview Elementary and Valleyview Middle schools. Afterwards, she had four active years at Morris Hills High School in Rockaway. “I would say that my upbringing in Denville is pivotal to who I am, and I say that in part because I was raised in a Black, Nigerian Jamaican household,” she says. “Obviously, that’s not necessarily what the composition of Denville looks like, but I think that my identities were strengthened through my upbringing in that there was a contrast between the environment that I grew up in and the household that I grew up in. Learning how to navigate that for my own self concept and for my own self identity was a journey, but I think it was a necessary journey in order for me to become the leader that I am continually striving to be.”

Morris Hills for White-Thorpe was incredibly formative in terms of what field she would enter and would pursue academically in college. She says, “At Morris Hills, I was part of the Math & Science Magnet program, and we did a lot of STEM based research.” She pursued an impressive, independent research project she called “Sudden Cardiac Death and the Sickle Cell Trait in African American Male College-aged Athletes.” She worked with a cardiologist in New Jersey who oversaw her research, as well as her Morris Hills teachers, and thereafter was accepted into every Ivy League school, and was also named the Association of Black Cardiologists Academic Youth of the Year and also received the World Association of Academic Doctors Academic Award of Excellence 

Five years ago, White-Thorpe wanted to be a doctor, but that would change. While at Morris Hills High School, she served as President of the Student Government Association, and while at Harvard ran for the position of Vice President. Making a campaign music video with her running mate and a group of her friends went viral on social media, and from there, multiple companies reached out to White-Thorpe and the group, one of those companies being Converse. “We entered into a working partnership with them where we developed the Converse All Stars series, which is a community of over 3,000 creatives worldwide that are composed of artists and activists that use their creativity for purpose and for social progression,” White-Thorpe says. “My experience working for Converse definitely helped me pivot, determine that maybe I wanted to pursue a career that allows us to use our creativity and our voices for something greater and bigger than ourselves.” Also, as a spoken word poet, she at a young age accidentally signed away the copyrights to some of her work. Therefore, her focus now is both on protecting creative’s rights as a lawyer, as well as healthcare law. She is currently in the Health Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School. “We do great work focusing on how to ameliorate social disparities or social health disparities through the law. That’s something that I will always be passionate about. As someone who has had family members taken advantage of by a system that they didn’t necessarily understand with regards to healthcare, that’s something that I look to rectify in my own practice.”

White-Thorpe has also co-founded a publishing company for Black women authors and writers called KOLO Publishing. “It’s a publishing house that I started with a friend from home and a friend from college,” she explains. “We’re looking to publish works written by Black women. I know that the industry can be a bit hard to get representation in, and it’s not always the easiest to self-publish if you want to do that as an alternative. It’s also hard to publish things on your own terms without having excessive input. And that’s not to say that we won’t give our writers feedback and won’t edit, but I really do want Black women writers specifically to be able to publish their own work on their own terms.” Also, ever the writer, White-Thorpe has been doing some screenwriting. “I write features and episodic shows, specifically in the dramedy genre, so I am always looking for ways to use the spoken word or written word, to speak and to live the experiences, and use it to relate to people and spread a message.”

White-Thorpe will graduate from Harvard Law School in May 2024. To learn more about KOLO Publishing, visit www.kolopublishing.com.