Meet The 2010/2011 Youth Advisory Board Members [Part One]

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes, but November marks the official start to the 2010/2011 term of the Ypulse Youth Advisory Board! This week, readers will start seeing posts from our newest members (including on the ground election coverage!) as well as the return of commentary, reviews and critiques from our YAB alulmni (see Julia’s game review today).

Look for more “what’s new with YAB” updates over the next few months, but, as of now, folks can look forward to refreshed returning features like Our Side of the Screen, Web Wonders vs. Time Wasters and YAB Reviews, along with new editorial and multimedia projects conceived and collaborated on by the YAB themselves. Members will also be continuing the conversation on the official Ypulse Twitter account and via email at youthadvisoryboard at ypulse.com.

Needless to say, we here at Ypulse are pretty excited about what the YAB has in store and hope readers feel the same. So before we kick off another term full of valuable, unfiltered insights from our international board of teens and twenty-somethings, I wanted to introduce (and reintroduce) the members (now expanded to 25!). Once again, I asked each board member to write his or her own bio in the third person, so here is part one of two of introductory posts spotlighting this year’s YAB in their own words…

Crystal C. Yan

Crystal C. Yan is a trilingual Chinese-American social entrepreneur, blogger, and graphic designer. Originally from California, Crystal is currently a student at Amherst College in Massachusetts. She is passionate about social entrepreneurship and is the cofounder of the Social Startup Summit, a conference that impacted students from 9 high schools to start 4 service projects and is the coproducer of What’s Next: 25 Big Ideas from Gen-Yers Under 25,  a collaborative book project on the power of youth featuring youth contributors from Seattle to Sierra Leone.  Crystal also started an internship program for high school and college students while in high school, worked as a consultant in the pro-bono division of a consulting firm to help a non-profit expand its donor and volunteer program in its 50 centers throughout the Bay Area and led 6000 students to raise $160,000+ for water filters for the Hydraid Foundation. Crystal has spoken on youth culture and marketing, personal branding, and social entrepreneurship at Stanford University, the Supernova Conference/University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, and more. An avid blogger,  Crystal blogs at http://crystaly.wordpress.com and has also contributed to USA Today, Ashoka, SocialEarth, and YoungEntrepreneurs and has been honored by Congressman Mike Honda,  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, California State Senator Joe Simitian for her service to the City of Cupertino. Learn more at http://crystalcyan.com and http://crystaly.wordpress.com

Camilla Nord

Camilla Nord is in her final year at Oxford University, where she has been studying physiology and psychology since she moved from Washington, D.C. She also grew up partly in Budapest, Hungary, and lived in Kathmandu, Nepal in her very early years. When she’s not writing essays, she is probably painting, practicing Bikram yoga, and thinking about manatees. When she IS writing essays, her favorite part of the brain is the basal ganglia, and her favorite neurotransmitter (those chemicals that shoot around the brain sending signals) is dopamine. The recent involvement of neuroscience techniques in product development and marketing has driven her interest in Ypulse, coupled with a lifelong love of writing—and, of course, a healthy obsession with pop culture.

Christopher Walcott

Christopher Walcott graduated from Caribbean Union College Secondary School and is in a process of acquiring a BS Degree in Computing and an Associated Degree in General Business at the University of the Southern Caribbean. There, Christopher Walcott became passionate about being a social entrepreneur. From a young age, he has been involved in an active youth group called Pathfinders, and has aided in building shelters for the poor, clean-up campaigns, anti-drug marches and being a positive male role model in society. His love for youth work, ambition and enthusiasm got him nominated to be a Youth Member of Parliament to promote the youth voice. During his tenure, he was involved in the Common Wealth Heads of Government Youth Forum (CYF) 2009 where he was one of the founding members of the Trinidad and Tobago Youth Economic Society. With his continuing involvement and development in youth activities, he was selected by the British Council out of sixty (60) young social entrepreneurs from the world to represent Trinidad and Tobago at the first ever Latin America and Caribbean Youth Summit (LACYS) 2010, in Rio, De Janerio Brazil. You can learn more about Christopher on his blog: http://walcottc.wordpress.com/.

Jacelle Soleil Manara

Soleil is studying Mass Communications, with specialization in Development Communication. She believes that as a media practitioner you become the brains of the nation; as a development communicator you become the heart of the nation. She aspires to be part of her country’s (Philippines) growth and development. Balancing her studies and fulfilling her obligations as the President of Environment Society in her College has always been a challenge to her. Soleil is a bookworm and reads anything from Darwin to Wilde. She is also courting writing and is afraid she might up end up marrying it.

Kat T

Kat is a junior in high school struggling with Depression, ADD, and Social Anxiety Disorder. She spends her weekends volunteering with her local no-kill animal shelter, one of the few places her anxiety won’t grip her, and she lives with her two parents, cat, and four dogs. When she grows up, she wants to be a vet tech. In addition to volunteering, she loves to write, read, and play video games.

Jack Grieg

Constantly searching for new forms of expression, writing and reading have become a major part of Jack’s life. He is drawn to adventure, travel being one of his greatest passions. He is a great believer in the power of youth and their innate ability to set trends and transform their environment around them for the better. From his home in Brisbane, Australia where he is in the final stages of completing a major in International Relations he dreams of new ways to see and experience everything the world has to offer.

Nita Tyndall

Nita is a junior from North Carolina. She hates writing about herself, especially in third person. She enjoys playing the piano (everything from Rachamaninoff to Sara Bareilles), writing, drinking tea, sign language, and reading books. She’s slightly obsessed with Sylvia Plath and psychology. When she’s not planning world domination, she writes novels that she hopes will be published someday.

Andrej jovanchevski

Andrej comes from Macedonia – a tiny, but lovely country sandwiched in the middle of the Balkan Peninsula. He’s currently studying economics in high school and aims to pursue a career in financial management, but considers versatility to be one of his best traits. Journalism, in particular, has come to be one of his greatest passions. He’s been a host of a youth TV programme since March 2009 and was a young reporter at the inaugural Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games. As founder and an active member of a charity organization called TALENTI, he is dedicated to realizing its vision: help disadvantaged people and parentless children develop their numerous aptitudes and pave the way to their complete social integration. With the wish to become a true cosmopolitan, he is also keen on learning languages and aspires to get an insight into various cultures. He’s definitely got the travel bug and while waiting for the chance to orbit the world, he delves into the most promising alternative – books. In his spare time he enjoys taking up tons of other hobbies, stamp collecting being the one that he’s currently hooked on.

Julia Tanenbaum

Julia is a Sophomore in Claremont CA. When not at school, she pursues her interests of video games, anime, and reading. Although not a true author she also enjoys writing fan fiction, occasionally immersing herself in online role-play sessions. She is also is interested in the news, including video game news, and spends a large amount of her time with her school’s speech and debate team. Although she isn’t as hip as others when it comes to teen culture, and may prefer Metallica to Justin Bieber, she loves watching TV and action movies with her friends. Although young, Julia has strong opinions, and is very excited to continue working with YAB, and writing reviews.

Caroline Marques

Caroline is working hard on her twelfth school year in Geneva, Switzerland. Her third year on the YAB will help her keep up with the numerous US trends in various departments, as well as keep up her two passions: reading and writing. When she isn’t busy working on an article, most would usually find her occupied with sports, school, photography, traveling, or enjoying learning several languages, working on her ‘novel’, music, making smoothies, hip-hop, kick-boxing, watching American TV, writing long papers at night and spending an enormous amount of time on her computer as well as trying to find life’s complicated answers.

Amanda Aziz

A true believer in the Socratic Method (no, seriously) Amanda believes that asking questions might just get her somewhere. Being a 17 year-old finding her way out of the superficial labyrinth that is known as “High School” in London, Ontario, Canada, she is not one who refrains from a challenge. Reading novels and asking questions are what satisfies her need to learn, and to get insight on different cultures (and pop culture!), languages (she hopes to be fluent in seven… good luck with that) to International Law/Social Justice and trends. Though she has many interests, she insists that music, hiding in the library during lunch time, volunteering with Mind Your Mind.ca, making insanely bad jokes, and wishing at 11:11 to be the “few” staples she can always rely on. Another passion of hers is writing- whether it be songs, poetry or stories; which is why Amanda is a second year member of the YAB for Ypulse. Maybe asking questions might just get her somewhere after all?