2025 Speakers
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2025 Speakers ~
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Shaurya Gulani is a junior at St. Francis High School in Mountain View, California. His hobbies include weightlifting, learning about wrist watch mechanics, 10k obstacle runs, hiking, charity marathons, and shoe designing. Shaurya has developed a unique appreciation for the college application process by seeing it as a blueprint for self-growth. He hopes to share this perspective through a TedX talk to help others become the best version of themselves through a healthy approach. With a passion for sports medicine, he hopes to bring innovation to the field through biomedical engineering and philanthropy.
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Avery Simonsen is a junior at Saint Francis High School. At school, she has been a part of the girls varsity soccer team since freshman year and involved in Student Council and as a Campus Ambassador to help new and prospective families discover the warm community at her school. Outside of school, she enjoys spending time with her friends, listening to movies and podcasts, and playing with her dog. Avery thrives off her positive energy and extroverted personality and loves to meet new people. Through her talk, she hopes to share her story and inspire others to be good and thoughtful listeners.
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Aadi Kenchammana is a senior at Saint Francis High School where he co-leads the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Club. Outside of school, he loves listening to music, swimming, skiing, spending time with his sister, and creating memories with friends. His inventive spirit first blossomed in his childhood garage, where he spent countless summer days building battle bots, modifying RC cars, and even carving a functional bow from a log. In his talk, Aadi explores the boundless curiosity of his youth—a time unburdened by the perpetual quest for accolades. He encourages others to move beyond society's fixation on achievements and resumes, embracing exploration fueled solely by wonder and the thrill of discovery.
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Alex Gklaros-Stavropoulos is a senior at Saint Francis High School. He loves playing basketball, volleyball, drawing, and walking his dog. He was inspired by his lifelong desire to find connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. He seeks to explore the different aspects to curiosity in his talk through Bruce Lee’s philosophy, scientific research, and his own lived experience. He hopes the audience will take away a renewed sense of wonder from his talk, with a willingness to embrace the unknown by asking the big questions.
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Marco Sucre is a junior at Saint Francis High School. At school, he is a member of the varsity football team and the social business and entrepreneurship club. Outside of school, he loves surfing, being outdoors, playing musical instruments, and most importantly spending time with friends and family. Marco is proud to be a part of a family with a rich and deep history, and is greatly inspired by the stories told to him by relatives. In his talk, he intends to use this connection to his history to spread knowledge on socio-political tendencies throughout the world, and the importance of looking back at history to improve the future.
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Edla Lahtiranta is a senior at Saint Francis High School. In her free time, she is involved as a Captain of the Varsity Pom Squad and Senior Class Spirit Commissioner, along with working closely with the Innovation Partnership Program at Saint Francis. Following her ADHD diagnosis in the midst of her junior year, she developed newfound clarity with habits and behaviors she had attributed as normal parts of growing up, learning that ADHD had drastically impacted her life long before getting an official diagnosis. Through her talk, she hopes to bring to light the difficulties in diagnosing ADHD, focusing on the struggles undiagnosed women often face. By intertwining her own experiences and scientific research, she aims to highlight that ADHD is multifaceted in its impact, and therefore approaches to identifying and addressing it must be as well.
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Devyn Ponnuvelu is a senior at Saint Francis High School. They love snowboarding, the outdoors, backpacking, reading, music, and cooking. At school, they’re involved in Pride Student Union, Affinity Council, and SFHS Acapella. Throughout their life, they’ve alway been told the same thing, that they are too much: too queer, too trans, too dark, too curly-haired, too outspoken. Through their talk with Katherine Winton, they hope to shine a light on the importance of quality representation in media for those that have been told they’re “too much” or “too little” and how media helped them let go of their need to find a box to fit into.
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Katherine Winton is a senior at Saint Francis who participates in newspaper, LancerHacks, campus ministry, and more. Aside from spending time with friends and doing outdoor sports like snowboarding and surfing, she loves reading, listening to music, watching movies, and really anything related to entertainment. In her duo talk with Devyn Ponnuvelu, she hopes to discuss what it means to be “too little” for people and to not be able to see yourself in the media. Together, they hope to show the importance of uplifting underrepresented voices in entertainment and how it can help people become comfortable with their identities.
SPeaker
Riyana Goel is a junior at St Francis. She is passionate about leadership, especially in regards to mental health advocacy in her community. She founded a global mindfulness nonprofit 5 years ago called Apart But Not Alone and has also worked on the City of Cupertino's Youth Activity Board for three years. Apart from TedX at school, she writes for The Lancer and is a tutor for the California Scholarship Federation. Riyana is a strong advocate for diversity within ideas, so she was compelled to speak about the lack of conversations regarding religious diversity. In her talk "I am...me", she shares her personal journey with religion and how she identifies as an atheist even after being intimately involved with multiple religions. Through her talk, Riyana hopes to break down stigmas around atheism and spark new conversations about religion through the lens of faith neutrality. Most importantly, she wants to emphasize the value of living in the gray space.
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Isabella Montesi is a senior at Saint Francis High School, the President of the Paintbox Art Club, and the ASB Social Media and Video Production Representative. In 2023, she attended the California State Summer School for the Arts’s renowned Animation track, making her a recognized California Arts Scholar. Her time at CSSSA not only opened her mind to the possibilities of the animated medium through digital and analog techniques, but also solidified her passion to pursue animated filmmaking professionally and foster greater educational arts opportunities at school. From watching Finding Nemo on loop as an infant to creating her own animated short films in high school, Isabella’s wonder with the medium is always evolving and expanding. Through her talk she hopes to share some of that fascination regarding an art form that is too often overlooked in the world of entertainment.