UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Six years after the school shooting that forever changed his life, David Hogg is turning his focus to helping members of Gen Z run for state and national political office.

Hogg will visit University Park to discuss his new venture, "Leaders we Deserve," on April 1 at 7 p.m. in the HUB-Robeson Center’s Alumni Hall. The event is sponsored by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy in the College of the Liberal Arts. 

Hogg was one of the students present at the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Following the shooting, he was one of several Parkland students to start the March for Our Lives movement with the goal to reduce gun violence.

Since its inception, March for Our Lives has encouraged young people to vote as a means to push for progress on this and other issues. Hogg said he is now encouraging his generation to take that involvement to the next level and run for elected office in their cities or states.

“I see this as a second step for our generation and the people in power that we're not just voting, we're also running,” Hogg told NPR when he announced the Leaders We Deserve PAC in Aug. 2023. “As a generation, we grew up hearing that to survive a school shooting, we had to run, hide and fight. I think, as a generation, we need to reinterpret what that means at a broader scale, and that we need to run for office."

Hogg co-founded Leaders We Deserve with Kevin Lata, who led Maxwell Frost’s 2022 campaign that made Frost the first member of Gen Z elected to Congress. The group hopes to encourage people under 35 to run for Congress and people under 30 to run for state legislatures, building on the efforts of organizations like Run for Something and Future Caucus, which also encourage young people to run for office.

Hogg graduated from Harvard University in spring 2023. He previously visited Penn State in January 2019 as part of the Student Programming Association’s Distinguished Speaker Series. His event on April 1 is free and open to the public; tickets are not required. For more information, visit democracy.psu.edu/events.