Local Student Goodman Lepota Interns for Clinton’s Presidential Campaign
Hailing originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, Marist College junior Goodman Lepota has delved much deeper into his interest in politics than his business and political science classes would have allowed.
Beginning this past May, the 21-year-old has worked as an intern for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential Election campaign. He is an intern for the campaign’s Communication department, where he coordinates meetings and interviews between the campaign and the press, and the campaign and the public.
Lepota, who came to the United States from South Africa after graduating high school in 2014, says that he has always been interested in politics, given his country’s strong political history.
“Nelson Mandela, the apartheid struggle; I’ve grown up watching television that really portrayed major political events and how the leaders got involved and campaigned to make South Africa have the freedom it has today,” he says.
While these experiences helped him shift his career goals in the political direction, working for Secretary Clinton’s was not something Lepota had necessarily strived for.
“I knew that I wanted to be part of a campaign when I came here, but [working for Secretary Clinton] was something I projected, not something I knew was going to happen,” Lepota says. “I knew I wanted to be involved in the 2016 election, but I didn’t know what that meant. I never thought months ago that I’d be working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign at such a level.”
He justified his decision to work for Clinton instead of another candidate based on an indirect experience he had with her back in 2013 in South Africa. At this time, Clinton held a global town hall meeting where Lepota’s high school was invited to the U.S. Consulate, and the students were given the opportunity to send questions to the secretary. After sending in a number of foreign policy questions and sitting in on the meeting, Lepota was introduced just a bit more to who Clinton was and what she stood for.
Fast-forward to the present, and Lepota is commuting to Clinton’s campaign headquarters, which is based in Brooklyn, New York. Since August, he has made the trip down to the HQ every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. He explains headquarters as, “the most diverse place I’ve ever worked in,” from the standpoints of age, race, gender, sexuality and education backgrounds.
“I would argue that the HQ represents America and it also represents the world in a very interesting way,” Lepota reflects. He also comments on the general mood of headquarters, which he explains as “very exciting and very hopeful.”
“I can recall most of the presidential debates which we watched together; the people were happy there. I remember when she pulled the ‘puppet’ line on Trump, we laughed, because we thought that was very interesting. That’s the energy, the mood there is very hopeful,” he says.
Lepota parallels the hopeful mood at the headquarters to the campaign’s overall message of being ‘stronger together,’ and to the fact that members of the campaign are optimistic that Clinton will pull through and win the presidential election.
During tomorrow’s election Lepota will be at the headquarters while Clinton is at the Javitz Center in Manhattan. The Javitz Center was strategically chosen as Clinton’s location because of its glass ceiling, which, if she wins, will symbolize the limitations she will have broken through as the first female president in this patriarchy.
Regardless of the election’s outcome, Lepota is grateful for the experiences he has had working for the campaign.
“I’ve learned a lot, but if there’s anything that I’ve realized it’s that I want to do this for a very long time. I want to be able to empower others to make an impact in the world and solve some of the world’s most complex and challenging problems, and campaigns allow people to do that,” he says.
