Rebecca Bean
Wakefield High School
Rebecca Bean was a freshman when she got to thinking about girls her age in developing countries being forced to abandon school to get married. By the end of her senior year, she had visited her congressman, Rep. Don Beyer, to lobby for educational opportunities for girls in refugee camps. “To have that conversation with someone in power is empowering,” says the Barcroft resident, who formed a school chapter of Girl Up, a campaign of the United Nations Foundation. The group brings in female speakers and organizes discussions about issues affecting girls.
Bean, 18, also participated in the Leadership Center for Excellence (formerly Leadership Arlington) youth program and interned at Running Start, a D.C.-based nonpartisan group that trains young women to run for offi ce. At school, she was on the swim and volleyball teams, studied Spanish and Mandarin Chinese (she wanted to learn the languages that are most commonly spoken in the world) and served as president of Wakefi eld’s Model U.N. program, which sends student delegates to conferences where teams represent the views of different countries.
Bean took 13 Advanced Placement exams and ended up with a 4.42 GPA that made her the valedictorian of her class. Next year, she is looking forward to courses in international studies and business at the University of Pennsylvania. “Social impact in touching people’s lives,” she says, is her long-term goal.
Denis Babichenko, a social studies teacher and co-sponsor of Wakefield’s Model U.N. program, says Bean’s greatest strength is her ability to connect and find common ground with different types of people. “I can talk to her about pressing world issues and she’s an informed individual,” he says. “One thing that shows her maturity is, she knows when it’s time to focus and when it’s time to laugh. She’s going to do something amazing in the world of social justice or global affairs. She’s going to be famous for all the right reasons.”