Meet Our 2024-2025 Student Representatives!

Our student voice program is in its second year! As we prepared to recruit the third cohort, we made some changes based on lessons learned. First, we changed the name, from Student Ambassadors to Student Representatives, to more accurately reflect the role that these remarkable students as representatives of the students who are stakeholders in our work to increase educational attainment in our region. Second, we changed the duration of the program from a single semester to a full academic year. We also changed the components of the program–we’ll post more about that later in the school year.

We are thrilled to be able to continue this successful initiative with a new group of young and aspiring leaders from our region. As with prior cohorts, this group of Student Representatives hail from high schools and postsecondary institutions from all over the Land of Sky region, as shown by the numbers below.

We are thrilled to introduce our 2024-2025 Student Representatives:

• Angel Castaneda from Clyde A. Erwin High School
• Kyla Christensen from Hendersonville High School
• Katie Cox from Western Carolina University
• Taj Despotovic from the University of North Carolina at Asheville
• Citlally Diaz-Mar from North Henderson High School
• Nicholas Flores-Gomez from North Henderson High School
• Shannon Gobble from Enka High School
• Zoe Lee from the University of North Carolina at Asheville
• Matthew Lupo from West Henderson High School
• Rylee Maggard from Enka High School
• Erin Mitchell from Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College
• Greysen Motley from Brevard High School
• Aiden O’Donnell from Asheville High School
• Jemma Richards from North Buncombe High School
• Selah Simpson from Asheville High School
• Shawn Ware from West Henderson High School
• Haley Woody from Enka High School
• Mary Grace Ziegler from Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College

Visit our Student Representatives page to learn more about these remarkable youth.