2025 Pathfinder Awards spotlight top high school seniors in Palm Beach, Martin counties

Each first-place award winner will receive $3,000. Students were recognized in a range of categories encompassing academics, the arts, sports and community engagement. Public and private schools submitted nominees for the awards, which are sponsored by The Palm Beach Post and have been presented for 42 years.

Here’s a look at some of these remarkable students:

Academic Excellence

First Place – Josetta Wang, Dreyfoos School of the Arts

Josetta Wang was born with underdeveloped fine motor skills.

The congenital problem persisted into her early school years. She struggled to make her hands work well enough to tie her shoes, use scissors or button up her clothes.

Wang’s preschool teacher took note of the problem and suggested that her parents enroll her in an extracurricular activity like sports, dancing or playing the piano as a sort of occupational therapy.

Wang began to play the piano, and it changed her life. Practicing improved her motor skills and sparked a love for music Wang has already ridden to extraordinary heights.

The little girl who once couldn’t tie her shoes went on to become an award-winning pianist. That journey alone would be remarkable, but it is not the only noteworthy aspect of Wang’s young life.

Wang became as proficient academically as she is on piano, compiling a 4.0 grade-point average and scoring a 1520 on the SAT. She is ranked first in her class of 328 and is waiting to hear back from prestigious academic institutions like Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Duke, Emory and Princeton. She plans to teach and eventually become a nonprofit executive.

In addition to her musical and academic accomplishments, Wang served as president of the Asian Cultural Society and Dreyfoos and founded a nonprofit, The Crescendo Project, that provides free weekly piano lessons to under-resourced elementary school students.

Wang has raised $32,000 for her nonprofit and has taught three students so far, including a little girl who inspired her to translate the nonprofit’s curriculum into Spanish.

“Eighty-eight piano tiles were my keys to overcoming linguistic insecurity and accommodating my congenital condition,” said Wang, who plans to study music, business administration or human and organizational development in college. “Knowing firsthand the transformative power of music, I will dedicate my life to reducing access barriers to music.”

Second Place – Derek Collins, Park Vista High School

Third Place – Jennifer Han, Palm Beach Central High School

Mathematics

First Place – Jeffrey Yu, American Heritage School

Jeffrey Yu plans to make data science his life’s work. No one who knows anything about him would question why.

Yu, after all, is a National Merit Semifinalist who has received a perfect score on the SAT. He placed first at the National Alpha Theta Math Competition in 2023 and then snagged first place in the Regional Science Bowl in 2024.

He was chosen as one of 15 Kenan Fellows interns at the UF Scripps Biochemistry Research Center, researching novel drug-screening systems.

Yu has already been accepted by the University of Central Florida and Florida State University and is waiting to hear from academic titans like MIT, Duke and host of Ivy League schools, including Harvard, Princeton and Dartmouth.

“I plan on majoring in mathematics and/or statistics to contribute to the field of data science,” Yu said. “I want to analyze large data sets and design algorithms to solve problems across diverse fields such as health care, finance, and technology. Ultimately, I’ll use data science to contribute to solving global challenges.”

Already, Yu has addressed some challenges close to home.

He volunteered at a retirement community and realized that many residents struggled with digital literacy. Some could not use smartphones to contact family and had trouble getting on the internet.

“Luxuries that we often take for granted,” Yu said.

So Yu decided to do something about the problems he saw. He held his own workshops for seniors. “But I quickly realized that I alone was not enough,” he said.

That’s when Yu decided to cofound TechEase, a nonprofit that organizes weekly workshops to teach hundreds of seniors digital literacy in retirement communities across South Florida.

He remained a one-man gang at first, but his work drew the attention of other tech-savvy volunteers. It wasn’t long before he was managing 20 volunteers and thousands in funding.

The math and tech whiz learned an important lesson along the way.

“As a team, we’ve made a greater impact than I could ever create on my own,” he said.

Second Place – Maya Edelstein, FAU High School

Third Place – Mia Hakkarainen, Dreyfoos School of the Arts

Reach for Excellence

First Place – Micah Kapp, Oxbridge Academy

Micah Kapp’s dyslexia jumbled words and mangled language into nearly indecipherable bits. The Orton-Gillingham approach, a structured literacy method that breaks down reading and spelling into more digestible pieces like sounds and letters, helped Kapp pushed through his early struggles with reading.

He never lost his love of decoding language, just as he never forgot those early struggles with reading and understanding. That’s why he bonded with Tania, a Ukrainian woman his parents had welcomed into their home along with Tania’s daughter.

Tania spoke no English, and Kapp spoke no Russian. “Communication was a mix of smiles, nods and Google Translate,” Kapp said.

But none of that was enough to help Tania move forward in her quest to learn English. Kapp’s own inability to speak Russian limited his ability to help. Frustrated, he took an extraordinary step: He applied for a program that would teach him Russian. When he was rejected, he applied for another. This time, he was accepted by Indiana University’s summer language workshop.

“Weeks later, alone in a dorm, I stared at indecipherable letters, reliving the frustration of my dyslexia,” he said.

Kapp, though, had a weapon to turn onto the problem: the language decoding skills he learned in his own battle with dyslexia.

“I labeled every object in my room with Cyrillic, and Russian began to click,” Kapp said.

He leaned into his ability analyze and synthesize concepts, skills he used to pick up a third language, Spanish. A spark had been lit.

Kapp was able to help Tania and her daughter, who remain close to his own family. “The sounds of both Russian and English fill our home,” he said.

Kapp plans to be a linguistics professor who will use innovative strategies to help neurodivergent learners.

He’s already well on his way, having created an independent study of Russian culture and traveled to Georgia and Armenia. He created a short film about Armenian artisans for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and has served as vice president of his school’s Model UN.

Kapp has already been accepted by a trio of universities, including Indiana University. He hasn’t made his college choice yet, but, in every other sense, he knows where he’s headed.

Second Place – Ava Webster, Jupiter High School

Third Place – Erica Frishberg, Olympic Heights High School

Computer Engineering and Technology

First Place – Mirabelle Kakushadze, William T. Dwyer High School

Mirabelle Kakushadze has always been interested in the full canvas of what academics offer.

She taught herself the Java and Python programing languages. She’s a programmer for a robotics competition team. She has interned at the Max Planck Institute for Neuroscience, assisting research into how stress affects neural circuits in the brains of mice. She impressed so much, she was taken on as a lab technician.

Kakushadze has worked as a tutor and raised money for books that would be donated to children. She’s been accepted at MIT, where she plans to major in computational neuroscience or biomedial engineering with a career goal of becoming a neural engineer.

“I’m very interested in the concept of reverse-engineering the brain, one that allows us to use artificial neural networks to first reconstruct the neural networks of the brain algorithmically and then teach them,” she said.

Second Place – Isabella Bodea, Jensen Beach High School

Third Place – Abigail Hepburn, Palm Beach Central High School

Art

First Place – Sophie Li,West Boca Raton High School

An accomplished artist who uses a wide range of mediums, Sophie creates insightful, well-thought-out art pieces with a message.

Sophie uses her art as a tool to inform others and her piece “The Secret Shelf” addresses her feelings of injustice about book banning.

Sophie scored a 5 on her AP art & design project and earned a Gold Key in the National Scholastic Art Competition. She is the vice president of the National Art Honor Society at West Boca High, creative director for the ArchiTect Club, and co-founder of Rho Kappa National Social Studies Honor Society.

After graduating with an AP Capstone Diploma, Sophie will be attending the Rhode Island School of Design. She hopes to one day start an art institute and use her art to address important issues through collaborative projects, lessons, demonstrations and mentoring.

Second Place – Sydney Combs, Palm Beach Central High School

Third Place – Natalia Velez Delgado, G-Star School of the Arts

Business

First Place – Luca Weisman,Dreyfoos School of the Arts

In his belief that financial literacy should not be a privilege, Luca founded Making Cents for Kids. Through innovative curricula they created, Luca and his team hold workshops across the county to teach kids monetary concepts.

Its success then inspired Luca to create the Mindful Money App, which combines psychology and technology to help users combat impulse buying. Luca also used AI to create a chatbot that connects underprivileged kids with public service programs using geospatial mapping.

Third in his class, Luca founded and is president of Dreyfoos’ first chapter of DECA, which works with emerging leaders and entrepreneurs. He has since won first place in DECA’s Finance District Conference Award and DECA’s Virtual Business Challenge for Florida. Luca will pursue degrees in economics and data science followed by an MBA.

Second Place – Jayden Kahn, RHS @ Donna Klein Jewish Academy

Third Place – Sara Bernard, Park Vista High School

Career and Technical Education

First Place – Ruhani Dashmesh,Jupiter High School

Ruhani is a member of her school’s medical academy, has earned an EKG technician certification, a mental health first-aid certification, and will be a certified pharmacy technician by graduation.

In 2022, she founded the Mental Health Awareness Club with an aim to reduce the stigma of mental illness and improve schoolwide mental health. The club has since grown to more than 200 members, who are educated on mental health issues and have raised more than $7,000 for the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Ruhani is also completing a pharmacy internship at Walgreen’s pharmacy. She’ll pursue an undergraduate degree in psychology, with a plan to go to medical school and ultimately have a career in psychiatry.

Second Place – Kayli Harris, American Heritage School

Third Place – Shelby Werner, Park Vista High School

Communications

First Place – Reagan Bresnahan,Seminole Ridge High School

Reagan’s work on Seminole Ridge High’s TV station, WSRH, allows her to live out her passion for meeting new people and sharing their stories.

Not only does she produce, anchor, report, write, shoot and edit for all of her school’s broadcasts but she also mentors her peers in her role as co-president and lead producer for the TV Club. Reagan has won district, state, and national awards for her broadcast work and has represented her school for three years at the Student Television Network National Convention in Long Beach, California.

She is captain of the speech and debate clubs as well as her lacrosse team. Reagan plans on attending Molloy University in New York, where she will play lacrosse and study communications and broadcast journalism. After college, she will pursue a career as a news or sports reporter.

Second Place – Latricia Lamour, John I. Leonard High School

Third Place – Samantha Roseff, Palm Beach Central High School

Community involvement

First Place – Jessie Baxter,Jupiter High School

Jessie has an unwavering commitment to serve her community.

To alleviate “clothing insecurity” for young girls, she created Ta Ta for Now, a nonprofit that provides undergarments to girls aged 11-17 in homeless shelters, foster care and low-income situations. Since its inception, the organization has distributed more than 33,000 undergarments, gathered more than $500,000 in donations and earned support from national powerhouse brands Victoria’s Secret and SKIMS.

Jessie volunteers with the Junior League of Palm Beach County, is a Business Partner with Education for her school district and has earned the Girl Scout Gold Award. She plans to attend law school to be a public interest lawyer and hopes to focus on initiatives that foster the growth and empowerment of young women.

Second Place – Shiv Sanghrajka, Jensen Beach High School

Third Place – Maya Behura, American Heritage School

Forensics/Speech

First Place – Nicholas Ostheimer,FAU High School

Nicholas is the founder and president of FAU High School’s Speech and Debate Team, and his debate skills have helped the team achieve national recognition.

He is a two-time Florida Blue Key Champion and was second at both the Harvard National Speech and Debate Tournament and the National Catholic Forensic League in 2024.

Nicholas is the founder and executive director of Equality in Forensics, a nonprofit dedicated to making speech and debate more accessible. Under his leadership it has grown to involve more than 700 volunteers across 20 state chapters. It is the single largest student-run organization involved in speech and debate.

In May 2026, Nicholas will graduate from FAU with his degree in political science and a minor in history. After attending law school, he plans to practice public interest law.

Second Place – Emma Gardner, Wellington High School

Third Place – Hannah Rogers, William T. Dwyer High School

History/Political Science

First Place – Chester Coles, The Benjamin School

Chester has a love for history, historical analysis and historical discussion, but his true passion and focus are classical numismatics — the study of old coins — and European history. That passion took him to the American University of Rome where, during the summer, he took college-level courses in archaeology and Greek and Roman mythology and participated in a small archaeological excavation.

Chester is a member of the Benjamin tennis team, president of the Classics Club and is founder and president of the Military History Club.

He plans to pursue a degree in classical studies at the University of Virginia and may double major in theology. He is interested in doing field research or teaching on a collegiate level.

Second Place – Joel Vincent, Suncoast High School

Third Place – David Brainard, The King’s Academy

Literature

First Place – Oliver Shane, William T. Dwyer High School

According to his AP English teacher, Oliver has a gift for literary exploration and experimentation of style and content. He is ranked top of his class with the highest honors point average his teacher has seen at Dwyer High School.

His passion for creative writing has brought him great success. He is the only person to have ever won the Palm Beach Dramaworks Young Playwrights Competition three times and won three Silver Keys and four honorable mentions for the Scholastic Regional Awards.

Oliver is the only high school student from Florida to be chosen as a Youth Ambassador for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, where he makes sure other young people with diabetes feel they aren’t alone.

He will be attending the University of Southern California’s Business of Cinematic Arts program, where he’ll learn to integrate his creative storytelling skills with the entrepreneurial skills required for financial success.

Second Place – Lauren Cavanagh, West Boca Raton High School

Third Place – Shannon Wills, Jupiter High School

Music/Instrumental

First Place – Thomas Gardner, Dreyfoos School of the Arts

Thomas, an accomplished flutist, is a member of three bands at Dreyfoos, where he also plays the piccolo and alto saxophone.

He is an All-State and All-County musician, was named the top ranked flutist among All-State musicians, and his jazz band was a finalist in the Essentially Ellington Finals at Lincoln Center. He has also played in the pit orchestra for both the Young Singers of the Palm Beaches and the Ebony Chorale.

He was invited to perform two pieces at the Baroque Jazz Festival in Miami with Nestor Torres, a renowned Latin jazz flutist. Thomas hopes to one day have a permanent position in an orchestra or symphony.

Second Place – Moorea Tan, American Heritage School

Third Place – Rebecca Su, FAU High School

Music/Vocal

First Place — Aime Pierre, Dreyfoos School of the Arts

Our Music Vocal judges were awed by Aime’s performance, calling it one of the most polished presentations they had seen from a high school student in a long time.

She participated in the highest-level music classes and performed at many county events. She co-founded and is president of her school’s Pickleball Club, and she volunteered at art camps where she worked with children on music, art and dance.

Aime plans to study nutritional sciences and fitness. As a dietitian and trainer, she wants to help people to become the healthiest versions of themselves.

Second Place – Sophia Perez, Cardinal Newman High School

Third Place – Jordan Ruiz-White, The King’s Academy

Science

First Place – Dishika Parikh, American Heritage School

Dishika is enrolled in American Heritage’s pre-med program while maintaining a GPA of 5.6 (weighted). As part of the school’s Science Research Institute, she completed a project about a noninvasive diagnostic method for Alzheimer’s disease, which has earned her accolades at the school, regional, state, national and international levels.

At the International Forum on Research Excellence, Dishika placed as the top presenter in biology and biotechnology among numerous global applicants. Also an award-winning orator, Dishika founded the nonprofit Speakwise Academy in 2022 to teach public speaking skills to students regardless of age or background.

Dishika plans to be a physician and has spent more than 436 hours volunteering at and shadowing pediatric oncologists and hematologists at St. Mary’s Medical Center, where she received cancer treatments as a child.

Second Place – Emma Allison, Palm Beach Central High School

Third Place – Laura Williams, Santaluces High School

Sports

First Place – Sarah Decowski, Martin County High School

Sarah’s commitment to swimming stretched beyond the pool when she used her leadership and debate skills to lobby for the repair and reopening of the Martin County Pool, where her team practiced.

By rallying teammates and the community to attend and speak at the school board meeting, the district committed $483,500 to get the swimming pool repaired.

Sarah has personally won more than 30 swimming awards and helped her swim team win seventh place in the 200-yard medley relay in the Florida State Championship.

Sarah is president of her debate team and founder of her school’s Academic Ambassadors. She plans to major in biology, become a veterinarian and work at a zoo that focuses on conservation.

Second Place – Sam Woods, The Benjamin School

Third Place – Yohaun Gordan, Glades Central High School

Theater Arts

First Place – Yair Roman, G-Star School of the Arts

Yair has immersed himself in all aspects of theater arts. He is a gifted actor and budding singer, but his true passion is writing. One of his plays has been published and produced.

Another highlight of his artistic career was directing G-Star’s piece at the Thespy One-Act Play Festival Competition. Under his leadership they received a Superior Score and the Critic’s Choice Award.

Yair will graduate with AICE diploma and IB diplomas and has received the highest AICE Drama score in the country. Yair will pursue a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and plans to continue acting and writing.

Second Place – D’Zzria Bethell, The King’s Academy

Third Place – Miranda Pachter, Dr. Joaquin Garcia High School

World Language

First Place – Anthony Viverito,The Benjamin School

Anthony, whose native languages are Thai and English, is also proficient in Spanish and Chinese.  As a serious world language student, he has maintained an A-plus average in both these languages throughout his high school career.

As a financial whiz, Anthony won first in state in Fiscal and Monetary Policy, sponsored by Eurochallenge.

He is the co-founder of WeeklyTheta, a nonprofit that promotes financial literacy through many channels — including a blog with 15,000-plus monthly views and a YouTube channel surpassing 500,000 total views.  Anthony plans to major in economics and then delve into commercial real estate development.

Second Place – Phoebe Nissanoff, RHS at Donna Klein Jewish Academy

Third Place – Carlos Mayor, West Boca Raton High School

Wayne Washington is a journalist covering education for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at [email protected]. Help support our work; subscribe today.