by Sophia Croll, Reporter, Warrior Update
AURORA – Shreya Joshi, a senior at Waubonsie Valley High School has been given the exciting opportunity to speak at the 2022 TED 2022 conference in Vancouver, Canada. Passionate about civic engagement, Joshi has spent the past few months preparing for this conference.
“From January to mid-March, honestly I was mostly just actually drafting the speech and going through a ton of different iterations with TED’s research team. Then from mid-March to now, I’ve mostly been work working on actually delivering it, rehearsing and just memorizing.”
Joshi will speak on important political issues drawing on her experiences from leading Project Teal, an organization that aims to educate students nationwide on the basic principles of politics, in an effort to increase interest in democracy.
“Collaboration, bipartisanship is possible, and I think that’s not really something that we see often in our current political climate. I’m mostly focusing on political polarization and how I as a 17-year-old teenager kind of view this growing political divide that’s kind of happening in America right now, and how I believe that we as a society can kind of begin to bridge this partisan divide.
Although speaking alongside distinguished people such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates can be daunting, Joshi is taking the challenge in stride.
“I’m really nervous because there’s going to be a lot of people there, but I’m just also really excited and really grateful for this opportunity.