Joshua Stern and Julie Harris

Gordon and Justine Harris of McLean, Va., announce the engagement of their daughter, Julie Elizabeth Harris, to Joshua Ethan Stern, son of Dr Michael and Karen Stern of Newtown.

The future bride graduated from Marksville High School in Marksville, La., in 1997. She then graduated from Loyola University in New Orleans in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and psychology. She graduated in 2004 from George Washington University, Washington, D.C., with a master’s degree in international education.

She is a public policy director at César Chávez Public Charter School on Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.

The future bridegroom graduated from Newtown High School in 2001, and then graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, N.H., in 2004 with a bachelor’s of arts degree in government and geography. In 2008 he graduated magna cum laude from Cornell Law School in Ithaca, N.Y., with a Juris Doctor degree.

He is an associate in the Washington, D.C., office of the New York law firm Cleary, Gottleib, Steen & Hamilton.

A March 2010 wedding is being planned.