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Carolyn Sharzer L’22

Carolyn is interested in the role lawyers play in working toward a society that promotes the rights of all people to live with dignity. Carolyn is originally from Southern California and graduated from Emory University with a double major in Anthropology & Human Biology and Spanish. Prior to law school, Carolyn worked in healthcare access and policy, with a focus on issues affecting elders and people with disabilities. Carolyn spent her first year after college as a paralegal at the New York Legal Assistance Group, Evelyn Frank Legal Resources Program handling Medicare and Medicaid access cases, through the AmeriCorps program Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps. She then worked at the Medicare Rights Center, continuing to handle healthcare access cases while also working on policy issues affecting people with Medicare and Medicaid. Carolyn then moved to Boston, where she worked for MassHealth, the Massachusetts state Medicaid program, on administration of programs that enable elders and people with disabilities to live in their communities rather than in institutional settings.

At Penn, Carolyn is involved in pro bono work through the Democracy Law Project and the Health Law and Policy Project. In her free time, she enjoys eating hand-pulled noodles, playing violin (really, all things music), and guide-running with the Philly and Boston chapters of Achilles International.