HIGH SCHOOL HIGHLIGHTS10.01.2025

Adia K.

Hello! My name is Adia K., and I am a senior with iLEAD Exploration Hybrid. I’ve been with iLEAD my whole academic career because of the flexibility and unique learning environment that helped me become the social and hardworking student I am today. iLEAD has allowed me to explore interests while maintaining rigor to be competitive for colleges. I am currently a semifinalist for the LA Posse Scholarship. If I’m not birding, I’m drawing my Spidersona, writing fan fiction, reading comics, or catching up on Marvel and Star Wars with my sister, Liana.

Thanks to iLEAD, I’ve studied art and digital illustration through Engage, photography and Spanish through community college, and continued guitar and piano for 10 years, all while challenging myself with AP and rigorous math courses. In my junior year, AP Environmental Science introduced me to biodiversity and organismal interactions. 
That class has become one of my top favorites, alongside literature and biology, because it renewed my passion for the natural sciences. That is, with the help of the birds.

I started birding in 2020, first with a backyard guide, identifying the Spotted Towhee while misidentifying my spark bird, the California Towhee. I developed skills to identify birds by ear and sight. In 2024, I began bird walks with park naturalist and ornithologist Ken Yasukawa, my career inspiration. Birding has brought me community, friendship, and purpose. I now plan to pursue ornithology and biology in college, volunteer at a bird banding station, and have recorded over 60 species on my Life List. 

Through birding, I’ve found a way to be a lifelong learner, because that is exactly what birders, scientists, and nature fanatics are. And we, iLEAD students, are a lot like birds: diverse, intelligent, and persistent. 

My dream is to study ornithology at Cornell University’s Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I encourage every iLEAD student to find their quirk and run with it, because there is a future for every kind of nerd.