Student wins American Airlines award

Townsend Harris High School senior Amy Wang was selected as an American Airlines College Tour Competition winner after her participation in the NYC GirlsREACH program.
Wang, a resident of Fresh Meadows, has been highly active in school. Among the organizations that she has been involved with are Key Club, ARISTA, and Seekers Club. She is part of the school’s newspaper, The Classic, and is an honors student.
During her freshman year, Wang, who is also taking some classes at Queens College in conjunction with her high school, took courses to become a Peer Aids Educator. She said that once a year the school has an HIV/AIDS Day. The peer educators go into each class to educate their fellow students.
“It’s really nice to be able to talk to your own classmates,” Wang said, adding that she thinks students are more careful because of the knowledge they have gained. “It really gets into their heads.”
Wang also said that she loves doing community service. Through her school involvement, she has worked in a soup kitchen and taken part in walks for the March of Dimes, breast cancer awareness and to honor firefighters who died during 9/11.
Previously, Wang spent four years at the NY Hall of Science, starting out as a volunteer before eventually getting a paid position. She also formerly was a coxswain of a rowing team.
Recently, Wang got involved with NYC GirlsREACH, which, along with NYC BoysREACH, is a parent program of NYC Young Professionals. Through her participation, Wang was able to interact with various executives as an intern at the Moody Corporation, working in the investor relations and corporate development departments. She said she wanted to work with the Moody Corporation because of an interest in the communications field.
“It was kind of nice to see how everything functioned,” Wang said. “I learned more than just what I had to do at the internship.”
Wang said that, as part of the program, she also took SAT classes and went to various workshops on things such as financial independence and how to act in a business environment. While the internship taught her about a potential future career, Wang said the other aspects of the program have motivated her to do better.
After graduating from NYC GirlsREACH, Wang was one of five students selected to receive an award through the American Airlines College Tour Competition. The prize was round-trip tickets to visit colleges.
A desire to do well has been Wang’s biggest motivational factor. She said that she likes to keep herself busy and that she takes advantage of any opportunity that gives her the chance to become more successful.
Following graduating from Townsend Harris, Wang is considering going to college to major in marketing and minor in finance. Some of the schools that she is debating attending are the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan, Boston College, Boston University and Penn State.