From 2024 to 2026, I have been a Co-Chief of the Tribal Tribune, which once was a Newspaper, but now has transitioned successfully to a Newsmagazine under my leadership. The Tribal Tribune also has its own digital website as well. I have led two staffs, and am the first Junior to become an Editor-in-Chief.

My first role on the Tribal Tribune Leadership was as the Web Editor. I was responsible for social media posts, website posts, and post design. I also wrote numerous stories, including some on local property battles. I served in this role as a Sophomore.

At the end of my junior year, I applied to become the Southern Interscholastic Press Association's Student President. I was elected into the position by a vote from member schools, and have reported to the executive board, provided student feedback and ideas, and helped plan the convention.

Over the summer of 2025, I took part in the University of South Carolina's 'Carolina Journalism Institute' program for journalism students. It was a week-long program where we learned from professors and students at the school. At the end, we were responsible for creating our own media. Since I understood how to use SNO and WordPress, and had experience leading staffs, I was placed in charge of making sure everyone's media was posted. I also provided advice and support for students who were struggling with their projects. I took the student staff pictures as well.

Outside of school and journalism, I own my own business, IversonPhotography, which has been successful enough for me to afford a Sony A7IV and two lenses with the profit from shooting senior pictures, car pictures, and sports shoots with a Canon Rebel T7. I currently contract for a marketing agency, and run my own social media as well.

Coming out of middle school, I was very interested in student government and representing my peers, so I immediately ran for Freshman Class President. I won the race and began work immediately, skipping lunch to plan events and do work for the Student Council leaders.

I ran for reelection after my freshman year and won class president again. This year, I had to balance my student council responsibilities with my AP Classes and Newspaper workload. I took a more aggressive approach to representing my peers, rather than creating posters and planning events for Student Council. As a result, I created the Student Outreach Committee, which is a little further down this list.

At the beginning of my junior year, I was nominated by Wando's principal, Chaz Coker, to be one of two students to represent my constituents at the School District's Student Cabinet. The Student Cabinet asks two student representatives from every middle and high school in the district to meet with the Superintendent, her staff, and the school board to discuss the student perspective on issues and identify other issues of importance. We also work together to develop solutions and action plans.

From my work as a Student Cabinet Representative, in my senior year, I was nominated by the Superintendent to be one of two students within the district to represent students across the district in an AI Policy development committee. We have successfully developed a policy framework that is going through review with the school board.

Starting my freshman year, I have been a student representative in my school's School Improvement Council (S.I.C.). This role has grown into me becoming the head of our projects committee, where I find events and issues for us to coordinate and address. Last year, we successfully planned and hosted a community-wide student mental-health seminar and awareness event. We showed a film geared towards raising awareness, and we brought in around 15 different local businesses to set up at the event to help students while also promoting their services.

In my sophomore year, I founded the Student Outreach Committee, a small group comprised of a diverse variety of students representing every minority and social group within the school.  Our goal is to bridge the gap between administration and students in order to bring administrative awareness to student issues. 

Since my freshman year, I have been a student representative at PTSO. I have always taken any information or issues I heard from my Student Outreach Committee to PTSO since they have the money and influence to make change. 

If you have already looked through my design portfolio, you know that I have co-designed multiple spreads and pages, usually because they were unfinished, or because the staffer was unable to handle their workload (sick, family issues, etc). I choose to keep their co-credits on these pages because I still want to motivate them to do better, and because sometimes it's not their fault - I'm someone who tends to give the benefit of the doubt to my staffers more often than not. For example, on the Fisher Bond feature spread, it was technically Marissa Soll's spread, and while she put in some of the photo requests for the pictures, I fully designed the spread. That said, she was very sick, and to me, leaving her credit on there doesn't hurt me, and it helps build camraderie and trust from her.

I'm a little bit of a stalker. After NSPA and SIPA, I look at every publication that won above us. I examine their work in detail, and especially after this latest NSPA, where we placed as a Pacemaker Finalist, but did not win the full award, I looked at every school that placed above us, even the middle schools. Then, I present to the staff what I saw in those publications that we don't do, with examples. Then we go over what we want to change and what we want to maintain. Additionally, we have a tradition called 'post mortem', where we go over the latest issue with the whole staff, right after send-off. We go page by page and talk about what we did like, didn't like, and what went poorly that we could improve upon. It is a judgment-free, honest conversation, and it always provides an outlet for us to improve following success or failure, large or small. I want to keep failure and success completely transparent with my staff, so that we, as a whole, can learn and course correct together.

As is with every publication, the Tribal Tribune does sometimes recieve criticsm and feedback of all types from people inside and outside of the program. As a leader, it is my job to make sure I shoulder whatever blame they have, rather than place the blame on my staff, because if there was an error by one of them, it means I didn't teach or support them correctly. Further, I have to know when I'm making mistakes, or screwing up, and I have to acknowledge that with my staff, or they're going to think that's the standard, and I can't fault them for that. For example, I have always struggled with deadlines, and I was transparent with my staff and co-chief about that when it happened, becuase I needed everyone to know that this isn't reasonable. This year, I have managed to meet deadlines much more, and that's growth from effort, which is all I want from my staff at the end of the day.

Another addition I made to the website in the second redesign was a new game called 'Trible', which is our little version of 'Wordle'. This was highly demanded by my Co-Chief and Associate Editor, who wanted to choose the word every day, but as a few weeks went by, they began to lose motivation and forget. To solve this issue and provide an outlet for staff bonding, I began to have the whole class meet in front of our Promethean board and do the Trible every day. Then, my editors had a physical reason to update the Trible daily, and the staff could also work together to figure out what the word was. It was a win-win.