Danielle Soltren
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Lake Brantley High School, Longwood, FL
Danielle plans to major in business and is her school’s Student Body President as well as President of the Seminole Country Association of Student Councils. She also serves as president of the Jefferson Awards committee in her school, a program in which schools organize volunteer community events. She was inspired to become a leader by her family, starting with her grandfather, one of 12 siblings, who moved from Puerto Rico to New York as a young man, speaking no English. He had to drop out of school to help his family, but persevered, instilling the importance of education in Danielle’s mother, who passed it on to Danielle. Because of them, she is “filled with the hope and determination” of her grandfather and the “strength and ambition” of her mother. With her mother’s support she found the courage to run for Student Body President in a school of 3,000 students, saying that “My grandfather showed me how to take my first steps, my mother taught me how to walk, and now I am running, with no intention to stop.”