As a light breeze rustles the plants behind her, Keya Mann (12) grins, surrounded by flowers of vibrant violet matching colors with her sweatshirt. Her eyes light up as her friend tells an inside joke, and she tilts her head back, laughing, before sitting up and shooting back another joke. With a powerful voice and a bright smile, Keya commands the lighthearted environment around her.

“The first word that comes to mind [when I think of Keya’s personality] is funny,” longtime friend Lucy Ge (12) said. “She’s very secure in herself and her humor. She has that energy that makes me feel like you can be yourself around her, and it’s a very carefree atmosphere that she cultivates for her friends.”

Support to and from friends goes a long way for Keya, influencing the environment around her friends as well as her own work. She relates her attention to the people around her to another aspect of her personality: along with humor, her mindset and drive shines through.

“A big strength of mine [is staying] focused and be[ing] able to manage myself [and] my time, working with other people in a collaborative space and improving from that,” Keya said. “I realized that as much as we all want to do it, we cannot do everything on our own. We have to ask our peers, our teachers, even our parents about how to do things better. That’s not something that stops at high school.”

Close friend Saanvi Arora (12) connects Keya’s work ethic to her drive and admires Keya’s speaking up when she disagrees or has more to say.

“She cares a lot about the people around her and issues that she researches and explores within an academic setting,” Saanvi said. “She doesn’t stand down when things are unfair. Her passion in that regard really shines through. It’s really refreshing to see someone like that and be very close to them because you know she’ll always have your back.”

Outside of Keya’s academic life, she enjoys other hobbies as a way to express herself in a non-stressful setting. After taking the Study of Theater Arts class in her freshman year, Keya continues to pursue this interest by playing a role in this year’s Student Directed Showcase (SDS).

“I love the bonding experience with the cast and being able to play another character was something that I really enjoyed,” Keya said. “It’s why I do singing as a hobby still because I enjoy that feeling of being [in] character: sometimes you don’t want to deal with the things that you have to do academically.”

Bringing her ability to speak up and express herself into her interests and future, Keya looks to spread awareness on a number of topics through media and research, medical and environmental issues alike. Influenced by her and her family’s experiences, Keya hopes to pursue computational biology, a field of study that focuses on analyzing sets of biological data using software programming.

“I want to make other people not have to deal with the struggles that my family had,” Keya said. “[Illness caused] my aunt [to] lose her mom at a really young age, and that was really hard for our family. I want to help other families not feel that certain way. That drove [me to pursue this]. Learning about it also helps me understand how I can work towards future treatments that can be possible.”

Keya’s drive to help others through her area of interest pushes her to try and understand the positive impact her projects and research leave on the field of study, as well as those in need. Rather than viewing it as an assignment, Keya sees her work as a step taken in the direction of change for the better.

“Research takes time, but you really don’t understand how much work goes into [it] until you’re involved in the project,” Keya said. “A lot of it is you trying to figure out why you’re doing what you’re doing, because you want to understand how your work is going to benefit in whatever you’re working [on]. For me, my [aim] is being able to contribute to the medical field, so I want to know why I’m working on something [and] understand the ultimate [goal].”

Upper school computer science teacher Anu Datar, who taught Keya in her Honors Data Structures class in Keya’s junior year, sees the same hardworking trait that shines through in Keya’s personality. Even over Zoom during the school year, Keya’s brightening sense of humor and determination to improve stood out to her teachers.

“One thing that struck me as something very special about [Keya] is that she’s very, very self aware,” Datar said. “She’s very proactive about taking action. If she thinks that she needs to improve on [an] area, if she sees an opportunity to improve on it, she’s got to do it. [It’s] not because the world expects it, not because a teacher expects it, but it’s something that she truly believes in.”

While Keya is now confident in identifying her own weaknesses and building upon them to improve herself, she had to overcome struggles with receiving criticism from others and its resulting insecurities.

“There’s always someone you can learn from,” Keya said. “You have to understand that there are going to be people that succeed more in some areas, [and] that there are times where your work [will] get criticized. Especially in freshman year, I would have a pretty bad self image. [But], I know that as I move on to college or even beyond college, [criticism] will not deter me from doing [the] things that I’m interested in.”

Learning from her challenges and obstacles has helped Keya come to terms with the less positive aspects of growing up. Even when the unknown is frightening, Keya is willing to take risks and give her all.

“I realized that life is way too short, [and] you have to jump at opportunities,” Keya said. “Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s better than not doing anything at all, [because] you don’t realize the consequences until you act on it. Just go and try something.”