CHICAGO — We report all too often on the gun violence that cuts short the lives of young people in our city.  But one Chicago-area college student is trying to re-write that script, and the Democratic National Convention could end up being her ticket to a better life.

At first glance, Christine Williams, 19, looks like every other volunteer working at the Wells Fargo Center. She checks DNC credentials and shows people to their seats.

But, this Aurora University sophomore is so much more.

Williams is from Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, a high crime area, prone to gun violence.  She even knows people who have been shot. But she wants something different for herself and her 2-year-old daughter.

“I have goals, I have dreams, I have big dreams,” Christine says.

She’s among a handful of college students from across the country picked by the Washington Center, a DC based nonprofit organization, to work at the Democratic National Convention.  With a nearly 3.8 GPA, the political science and business administration major, who’s also minoring in accounting and international studies, hopes this experience will lead to bigger and better things.

The trip to Philly was Williams’ first plane ride ever. She admits she wasn’t really into the political process – at first – but now she one day hopes to run for political office, maybe congress or even president, thanks to Hillary Clinton.

She knows most people don’t expect someone like her, a teenage mother from the West Side of Chicago, to end up successful. But that’s only pushing her to do more.

“It allows me to give my community a voice, and how that just because you’re from a certain part, certain area, doesn’t mean that you can’t become something in life,” she said.

Well said, Christine.