If you scrolled through Medha Yarlagadda (’24)’s camera roll, you would come across albums of sunset photos, videos of friends collapsed in laughter and endless “0.5” candids —a vibrant collection of all the things that mean the most to her. To Medha, capturing these moments of joy and life is essential to her personality. 

“Pictures are one of the best ways to capture connections,” Medha said. “Having those memories are really important to me to look back on, because all these things come together to make who I am in the present. I love looking back and just seeing, ‘This is my community. This is who makes me who I am.’”

Taking pictures is just one way Medha embraces the people around her. Searching for ways to impact her community on a larger scale, she joined the TEDxHarker team in her sophomore year, quickly learning the ropes as PR associate. Working alongside her peers, she fell in love with the collaborative, close-knit nature of the team and its mission to magnify unheard voices. 

“I really like what TEDx does—bringing stories to our community that aren’t necessarily highlighted, stories that aren’t necessarily familiar,” Medha said. “Seeing how the team comes together, how the community comes together to listen to these speakers or interact with these companies—the fact that everyone’s so open minded to learn all these new things is really inspiring.”

Medha worked tirelessly to spark that sense of open-mindedness, within both the team and the larger school community. In her junior year, she became the TEDx curator — the first time someone stepped into the position as a non-senior. Through long hours of choosing speakers, planning activities and coordinating with sub-teams, she grew tremendously as a leader and communicator. Upper school business and entrepreneurship teacher and TEDx adviser Michael Acheatel expressed his admiration for Medha’s ability to both lead others with compassion and delve into challenging work herself.

“Medha is super well balanced: she’s really approachable and can get along well with adults and students alike, but she’s also not afraid of the hard work of the technical side and the operational tasks of TEDx,” Acheatel said. “She’s a great leader but also a great member of the team and drives whatever tasks need to happen.”

For Medha, TEDx presents an opportunity to do what she loves most: sharing impactful stories and bridging the communities around her. She attributes this passion for storytelling to her family, fondly recalling conversations with her parents and grandparents about their experiences growing up in India.

“Even from a young age, storytelling has been impactful with my family,” Medha said. “With my grandparents, English isn’t their first language, but one thing that does bring us together is all these stories. From those experiences, I’ve made it an underlying mission to help others realize how intentional storytelling can help connect people.”

That mission is what first led Medha down her path in public health and medicine, a field she considers a satisfying combination of helping others and growing her own knowledge. The summer after her sophomore year, she began volunteering at a local hospital, organizing medication and helping answer questions for patients at the front desk. To Medha, the most rewarding part of the experience was interacting with the patients themselves and learning to tailor her skills to them. 

In particular, Medha recalls an experience prescribing medication over the phone to a patient who couldn’t speak English. Rather than referring the patient to someone else, she went the extra mile to use translation to communicate with them. She remembers the feeling of fulfillment from being able to use her skillset to serve someone else. 

“In the medical field, you’re interacting with all these individuals and trying to help them,” Medha said. “That’s another aspect of connecting with people that I really found interesting from a young age: being able to connect with them, but then also help them. Even beyond uncovering the stories of people, learning more about conditions or just various fields of science was very interesting to me, because I feel like there’s so much unknown.”

Medha’s joy for helping others seeps into every part of her life, inside and outside the lab. When she’s not volunteering with Kaiser or researching the effects of various immunotherapy treatments, she can be found planning surprise birthday celebrations, crafting posters for Senior Nights or hosting group dinners and sleepovers. Close friend Vardaan Ghai (’24), who first met Medha in a middle school Mandarin class, recognizes how Medha has always been adamant on expressing her love for others through these meaningful gestures.

“Medha’s biggest strength is her ability to bring people together,” Vardaan said. “She makes it a very big priority, making sure people feel really special and just caring for them. She goes out of her way even if it’s an inconvenience to her, because she knows it’ll make another person feel happy. That’s why people are drawn to her.”

In every facet of her life, whether with her closest friends, the people she’s leading or the patients she interacts with, Medha’s caring personality shines through. Acheatel echoes this sentiment, emphasizing that Medha’s compassionate leadership, a blend of hard work and a commitment to nurturing community, sets her apart from any other. 

“What I’ll really miss about Medha is that she really makes sure everybody in the room is having fun and enjoying themselves,” Mr. Acheatel said. “It’s not just so serious all the time and about getting the work done. It’s also about, ‘the process matters.’ I think that that will take her really far as a leader in terms of caring about those who are around her and not just about the result.”

In the Business and Economics classrooms, research lab or the hospital, the core of Medha’s efforts lies her determination to fuel her communities. Driven by her affinity for storytelling, Medha curates connections between each aspect of her life.

“Everything I do comes back to sharing the stories of and serving people,” Medha said. “Whether it be through my friends or family or even my extracurriculars, finding where that overlap lies is so important to me.”