{"id":8847,"date":"2014-05-20T15:45:09","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T19:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8847"},"modified":"2014-05-22T16:12:30","modified_gmt":"2014-05-22T20:12:30","slug":"in-her-own-words-niesha-leonard-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8847","title":{"rendered":"In her own words: Niesha Leonard \u201915"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"NR14TCNJLeonardN5438\"
Niesha Leonard shows a picture of her father, Marc, that she keeps on her phone. His murder, in 2005, helped inspire her community activism. Photo (c) Nick Romaneko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My father was killed when I was 12 years old.<\/strong> Two men tried to rob him at gunpoint and when he refused to give them anything, one of them shot him in the face. They never caught the guys who did it.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Trenton, N.J., I was a quiet child.<\/strong> I kept to myself. After my father passed away I became more outspoken and started to get involved in my community.<\/p>\n

I did a lot of volunteer work in high school and now I\u2019m in the Bonner Community Scholars Program here at TCNJ.<\/strong> They placed me with a local organization, where I work with at-risk teens who are on probation. These are great kids; they just do bad things. There\u2019s a difference. I always tell them: I\u2019m from Trenton, just like you.<\/p>\n

A lot of people in urban areas constantly question the criminal-justice field.<\/strong> If you want to make a change, you have to be a part of that change. My first step is being a criminology major and then taking it from there.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve wanted to be a lawyer since I was 5 years old.<\/strong> Now I know that I want to practice criminal law in an urban area. What\u2019s most important to me is giving people a sense of closure, since I never got that.<\/p>\n

I think all my professors know my name because I\u2019m that girl who raises her hand for every single question.<\/strong> I just love to dig in and ask questions in the classroom \u2014 it\u2019s just the most amazing thing for me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m always up for a good conversation, especially with strangers.<\/strong> I enjoy picking people\u2019s brains. But I\u2019m still naturally a quiet person and I also love being by myself.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really diverse when it comes to music.<\/strong> At 4 in the afternoon I\u2019m listening to rap and at 4:05 I\u2019m listening to Taylor Swift. I like artists who are lyricists. You need to have a message or a story behind what you\u2019re singing.<\/p>\n

If there was an occupation called \u201chelping people\u201d that would be the perfect job for me.<\/strong> I need to help people to feel complete. It lets me put aside what I\u2019m going through to be there for someone else. The way I look at it is you might have problems but someone else always has bigger problems than you do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a teenager, Leonard\u2019s personal tragedy ignited a desire to help others. She hasn\u2019t stopped serving the local community since. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":8850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-2014","category-on-campus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}