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Erica Shinohara Wins Coro Fellowship

The program starts in September and will give Shinohara, of Honolulu, an opportunity to shadow elected officials, department heads and chief executive officers to learn how business gets done in the social, political and economic fabric of a city.

The Sacred Hearts Academy graduate is one of 64 fellows who will serve in Coro centers in New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and San Francisco. Each fellow works in a series of assignments with a government agency, business, political campaign, labor union, media organization and non-profit group. Shinohara will receive a $9,000 stipend.

“My first-hand work experience and intensive training in the Coro Fellowship Program will help clarify my career and education goals,” Shinohara said. “By acquiring knowledge of how public policy is constructed and analyzed, and learning practical applications of it to real-life situations, I will have a better idea of what type of graduate study I should pursue.

“Furthermore, when higher education gets intense and very difficult, which it will, I will have concrete reasons from the work I did in the Coro Fellowship to remind me of why I am there in the first place,” she added. “I am not only honored, but blessed to have this opportunity to be a Coro fellow.”

Shinohara said she is considering attending graduate school to earn a joint degree in law and public policy.

Coro was founded in San Francisco in 1942 when W. Donald Fletcher, an attorney, and Van Duyn Dodge, an investment counselor, launched an exploration into the world of public affairs. Their premise was based on the realization that, unlike law, business or medicine, post-graduate training in the area of leadership was non-existent. The name “Coro” is the creation of its founders. It was a new word and one without association, invented to represent both discovery and exploration.