Alumni {sequence}

As the senior class president of Class of 2025 at my school and this being my first year in the 20/20 Leadership program, I’ve grown as a leader by taking initiative and doing the hard work necessary for my peers to thrive, I’ve learned from those before me and I’ve been amongst my peers enough to know what they want and need. I’ll use what I’ve learned in the future to help my community thrive and bringing proper representation with my successful endeavors as a queer person of color. To me, leaving a legacy means having such an impact on a person’s life that they take that everywhere they go throughout their lives, it means leaving something powerful and meaningful behind for others to look up to. 

Throughout the entirety of my academic life, I’ve always seen myself as a leader and I’ve always acted as a leader. Most times, it always seems to feel natural in the way that I lead. I’ve always gone out of my way to set a good example of what a leader truly this for my peers and the adults around me. Leadership in my opinion, is being a person of experience, empathy, determination, and ambition. To be able to lead those around you, you have to live and be among those around you. You have to be able to identify who they are, identify where they come from, identify what they believe, identify what they want, and most importantly you have to identify what they need. You have to work towards leadership, you have to show your peers that they can trust that they can be led by you, your actions have to speak louder than your words. To achieve leadership, you also have to be led yourself and to learn and be inspired by those who have led you. 

Before I made the decision to become senior class president at my school, I was inspired by a senior in my yearbook class my sophomore year of high school. She was a mentor for me, she was a true embodiment of leadership and I learned everything I possibly could from her, I looked up to her almost daily. She was the senior class president of her class, and she did everything imaginable during her time at the school, she’s the reason I wanted to be senior class president. Watching her go out her way every time to make sure her peers had events and activities during their remaining time of school was inspiring. After watching her on the podium during her graduation, I realized that I wanted to be just like her. When I became a senior, I immediately ran for senior class president. When the winners were announced, It was revealed that I was tied with another student, the student I was tied with only ran for the title and not the work that came with it. With that in mind, I made it my mission to show my peers who the more deserving candidate was, not for an ego boost, but to show everyone that they actually have someone in their corner to fight for them and to be a great representative for them. Since then, I’ve been the face for not only my class but for my school, I’m currently the head of the Social Media team at my school, I’m one of a few students in my school that are in the 20/20 Leadership program, I’m a committee member for the National Honor Society, I’m the only student at my school that’s a student ambassador for the Kauffman Foundation Real World Learning program, I’ve been a chairperson of social events for the Job’s for America’s Graduates program, I’ve made petitions to get our school activities back after 5 ½ months of them being stripped away from us and got 192 signatures from them, and the list goes on and on. I take leadership very seriously.