For Era Iyer, singing serves as a mode through which she can relax and have fun. She had her first encounter with music when she began playing the violin to follow her older brother’s footsteps. However, she later realized her passion for singing in middle school when she starred as Lady Larken in “Once Upon a Mattress,” and has continued to grow ever since.

“In seventh grade, I was cast in my school musical, ‘Once Upon A Mattress,’ so that was fun for me. The next year, I was cast as Belle in ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ and I think that was my ‘aha’ moment,” Era said. “I really enjoyed every second of the performance [like] watching Youtube videos on how to sing the songs. Since then, I’ve always been interested in music. I later gave up violin because I thought that it was something I was just doing because my brother did, and I felt that singing was something for me specifically.”

After singing for over five years, Era has taken part in many competitions. During her junior year, she won first place in the American Fine Arts Festival: Golden Voices of America. As a result, she got to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City last May.

“I’d always wanted to go to watch a performance at Carnegie Hall,” Era said. “But never in my life did I expect to be on the other side.”

Apart from music, Era’s love of food takes her both around the world and hours away from home.

“The way I was raised, I grew up eating different cuisines and foods. A lot of [my family’s] travels have been based around food,” she said. “All the countries we’ve traveled to are known for some amazing dish or their food in general, like Indonesia, France, and Thailand. Growing up my entire focus has been around getting to know different cultures by their food. It’s just something that’s been imparted in me by my parents and my brother.”

Sarisha Kurup (12) has known Era since middle school, and recognizes that Era’s love of food is a unique and defining quality of the way Era is as a person.

“I’ve come to call her passion ‘food anthropology,’ because she loves to discover food of all different cultures and identities, and to understand what she is eating, how it came to be both culinarily and historically,” Sarisha said. “It’s a passion that I think is indicative of who she is as a person–a girl who is insatiably curious and excited about the world she has been given.”

Era does not mind driving for over an hour just to eat at a restaurant or experience a new kind of cuisine. From making impromptu boba runs after school to Redwood City to going to Willow Glen to eat at one particular food truck, eating the perfect meal is extremely important for Era.

“People always make fun of me for driving really far ‘just for a drink’ or ‘some food.’ But for me it’s more than that; it’s a unique way to experience the world. What can I say? I have a big appetite for culture.”