Episode 25: Youth serving their future and ours

This is a special episode of the Check It Out! podcast.

It brings four special young people together for a conversation between themselves and moderator by one of their own: Rilee Louangphakdy. Each of these young adults presented themselves and their thoughts at a previous TEDxSnoIsleLibraries.

In this episode, they talk about their experiences on the TEDx stage, how it shaped them and what they are doing now. See the photo gallery of their conversation at the Edmonds Community College Black Box Theater.

Rilee Louangphakdy

Rilee is committed to helping and motivating others to emerge from their teen years transformed by their experiences. He has shared his stories of personal loss and gain in a commencement speech, at the 2015 YMCA Minority Achievers Program banquet, and to students at the Marysville Getchell High School International School of Communications. Rilee is a graduate of Marysville Getchell 2015 graduate and Everett Community College, He is attending Washington State University, working toward a degree in Integrated Strategic Communications.

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Mark Perez

Mark is living his childhood dream to be a motivational speaker. A graduate of Henry M. Jackson High School, mark attended Cascadia College and is now a student at the University of Washington. In addition to his studies, Mark is work with Houston Kraft, another young and inspiring motivational speaker. Mark says his goal is to be a speaker who inspires people to make their mark on the world.

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• Mark's website

Sargun "Sargi" Handa

Sargi says being a TEDx speaker not only helped giver her voice, but it also helped start her career in public speaking. Just six months later, she spoke at WE Day Seattle at KeyArena in front of 16,000 people. Sargi transferred her skills in speaking to writing and co-authored, "20 Beautiful Women" Volume 6, which is on its way to becoming a film documentary. A graduate of Kamiak High School, Sargi also attended Western Washington University.

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Dhruvik Parikh

Like many seven-year-olds, Dhruvik like dinosaurs. Dhruvik, however, translated that into a conviction that he would grow up to be a paleontologist. That may still happen, but now attending Stanford University, Dhruvik has many more experiences. He was valedictorian and earning a perfect 4.0 at Henry M. Jackson High School in Mill Creek. He is lead software engineer for a firm developing a solar micro-grid solution for unelectrified communities in Zimbabwe. He did computational biology research at the University of Washington. And, he interned at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology the summer after high school. When he's not learning in school, Dhruvik is learning on his own in subjects such as organic chemistry and machine learning.

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Sriharshita "Harshu" Musunuri

Harshu is studying at Stanford University, which is an accomplishment in itself. But there's more. As a student at Henry M. Jackson High School in Mill Creek, Harshu was already earning national recognition for her research in thermoelectrics. She interned at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was a curriculum director of the non-profit Girls Rock in Science and Math. She was also a 2016 Davidson Fellow Laureate and student researcher in a University of Washington chemical engineering lab.

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Episode sponsors

The Sno-Isle Libraries Foundation
proudly supports the innovative work of Sno-Isle Libraries through private donations.

Edmonds Center for the Arts provides an array of outstanding performing artists from around the world, hosts events and serves more than 75,000 patrons annually.