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April 12, 2017 - Image 12

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Wednesday, April 12, 2017 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, April 12, 2017 // The Statement

5B

Meet the Students

Student of the Year Issue

“I loved the people, I think is what first drew

me to it. … It’s a very specific kind of openness
you have to have, as a performer.”

It’s the end of the week, and though Megumi

Nakamura, a sophomore in the University of
Michigan’s Music, Theatre & Dance School, is
juggling a packed schedule — she has six hours
of class on an average day, is currently working
on two theater productions, is often in rehearsal
until 12:30 in the morning, works with faculty in
the School of Music, Theatre & Dance on issues
of diversity and facilitates workshops for visiting
elementary school students and middle-school-

ers through the Michigan
Performance
Outreach

Workshop — she’s friendly
and eager to talk.

This is the kind of open-

ness that, it seems safe to
say, would be exhaust-
ing to most people. Luck-
ily, Nakamura is not most
people.

She leans forward as

she continues speaking,
spreading her hands in the
kind of emphatic gesture
that comes naturally to
her.

“I started to figure out

that being a community leader and activist, the-
ater was an incredible outlet for that, and it gave
me a voice, and it was a way that I understood
how to give other people a voice, how to tell sto-
ries that I wanted to tell.”

Nakamura is working to share this outlet

with others through the Michigan Performance
Outreach Workshop. She joined MPOW, which
brings students from Detroit-area schools that
have little or no funding for the arts to the Uni-
versity for a day of performance workshops, as a
freshman. Through it, she’s able to accomplish
what she considers to be her overall goal in col-
lege: “to bring back a high level of arts to under-
funded schools like that” and to “spark interest”
in performance.

She smiles as she describes the kids’ reactions,

saying, “We do, like, one day of workshops with
them, and performances, and at the end of the
day, students walk away being like, ‘I can be an
actor,’ or like, ‘You know what? I think I’m a good
actor!’ ”

Involvement in MPOW seems to have been a

natural path for Nakamura, who grew up attend-
ing public schools in San Rafael, Calif., that also
had little funding for arts education. After real-
izing her love for the performing arts, she was
able to find outside resources through the San
Francisco-based American Conservatory The-
ater, and eventually began providing them for
others: She started teaching theater as an assis-
tant in high school, and began teaching theater
and dance on her own after she graduated.

Now, as the incoming vice president of

MPOW, Nakamura is determined to expand the
impact of theater as a means of nontraditional
learning and communicating unvoiced stories
and experiences. While the organization cur-
rently focuses on fifth-, sixth- and seventh-grade
kids, she’s hoping to expand it to include high-
schoolers and college-prep-style workshops.

Despite the amount of time and effort she puts

into the performing arts, she doesn’t get tired of
it. When asked what her ideal, stress-free situa-
tion is, she laughs and responds: “Probably see-
ing theater, honestly. … That’s kind of the most
relaxing times I have, to just sit and appreciate
my classmates and fellow actors and see the
work people are doing. I think … a lot of the most

exciting work that happens here comes directly
from the students — student-directed and stu-
dent-written pieces, because those are the shows
that are reflecting our current situations.”

Nakamura’s commitment to giving voice to

relevant stories is one of the primary reasons
for her involvement in different communities on
campus. She doesn’t get carried away with her-
self, though — she understands the importance
of stepping back to assess a situation from the
outside, a practice that can easily get lost in the
drive to stand out as a leader on campus.

“Coming here was overwhelming at first

because … I wanted to be able to connect with
anyone that I possibly could, and there’s so many
people here, and so many different identities that
it’s been a really incredible and challenging pro-
cess to step back and say that, in order for me to
one day be the leader and activist that I want to
be, and be someone who … facilitates platforms
for people to share their voices, their opinions, I
have to understand those communities first.”

As a leader, Nakamura is able to teach and

empower, but more importantly, she’s able to
listen.

“I know I can help more if I wait and I learn

from the members of that community and recog-
nize my own ignorance,” Nakamura says.

She places her hands resolutely on the table in

front of her as she says this. Performance, after
all, demands a certain amount of receptiveness
to the audience — and Nakamura’s ready to take
the stage.

Megumi Nakamura

BY MARISA FREY, Senior Copy Editor

Cancer has closely affected LSA senior Rebec-

ca Ress throughout her life. Her mother has been
battling colorectal cancer for the past 10 years,
and she lost her father to lymphoma three days
before the start of her freshman year. But soon
after arriving on campus she, at the urging of
her sorority sisters, became involved with Camp
Kesem at the University of Michigan.

Camp Kesem at the University is part of a

national nonprofit of primarily college students
that organizes free camps for children of adults
battling cancer. Camp Kesem at the Univer-
sity organizes two one-week camps in August at
Camp Copneconic in Fenton, and has nearly 100
student volunteers involved. Ress was drawn to
the camp, as it was something she wished she had
when her parents were battling cancer.

“I grew up having two parents who were both

fighting cancer, and I didn’t have any resource like
that,” she said. “It was definitely an ostracising
feeling. So coming to this university, and realizing
that I had the power to spread this community
to other children in the area to have that kind of
community was a no brainer.”

Ress started off her first summer as a coun-

selor, and quickly became more involved, being
promoted to outreach chair on its coordinating
board. In that role, she managed camper-family
relations and reunions, as well as the organization
of medical staff and information for the camp. She
now serves as co-director, responsible for all the
aspects of the camp’s planning and fundraising.

Ress estimates that it costs $1,000 to send one kid
to the camp. This summer, the camp will be its
largest ever, as it is hoping to serve 260 kids.

While it may be a lot of work, Ress feels that her

job is incredibly rewarding.

“I like the mission-focused work, and feeling

that passion,” Ress said. “I spend so much time
working on Kesem that it doesn’t feel like work
when you’re working for something that you care
about that much.”

Ress stresses that Camp Kesem tries to give

campers as normal a camp experience as possible.

“We say that Camp Kesem isn’t a boo-boo

camp — it’s not like a cancer camp,” she said. “It’s
pretty much a regular, crazy, dirty summer camp
where we’re swimming and on the lake front and
doing ziplining and messy games and things like
that.”

However, the camp does dedicate one day of the

week as an “empowerment day” to help campers
through their tough times. The day begins with
counselors and campers alike sharing their own
stories if they choose, with the goal of empower-
ing themselves and other campers. Ress felt that
this day was most impactful to her when she was
helping others prepare their stories.

“My first year I spoke at empowerment, and

the following years I’ve learned that I find more
joy in finding others to speak,” Ress said. “So help-
ing other counselors helping campers through
their stories, and bringing them forward to feel
the power to share their stories has been really

meaningful for me.”

Co-directing the camp isn’t the only hat Ress

wears. She also cares for her mother, who is still
battling colorectal cancer, as her father has passed
and her siblings have moved away. She drives an
hour home to Troy every other weekend or so, to
make sure her mother isn’t always alone.

“Her chemo is pretty rigorous right now, where

she can’t always get up and down the stairs or feed
herself,” Ress said. “Sometimes, I need to take her
to the hospitals to get IVs or things like that.”

Her mother’s long-term treatments were on

her
mind
even
as Ress
was
choos-
ing
a

college.
Her
mother
goes
through
a
new

round
of treat-
ments
about
every
year and
a half to

keep her cancer under control.

“Coming here, and when I was applying to

colleges, I definitely had to consider distance to
home,” she said.

While Ress has faced many obstacles before

and during her college experience, her experi-
ences with her parents battling cancer and the
campers she works with have given her a new
perspective on what it means to have a bad day.

“I tripped and spilled my coffee and it was just

a typical kind of bad day, and I couldn’t help but
laugh because I was so grateful to have a silly type
of bad day.”

Rebecca Ress

BY JEREMY KAPLAN, Daily Opinion Editor

Every morning, Keiana Cavé looks in the mir-

ror and tells herself to be a badass. And so far, her
mantra has worked.

The University of Michigan freshman is a

member of Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2017 —
one of the youngest in the Energy category.

Cavé was recognized for her work surround-

ing the BP oil spill of April 2010, which she start-
ed researching at Tulane University when she
was 15. Her primary goal was to prove that there
is something more dangerous about a layer of oil
sitting on the ocean surface than just pollution
— the reaction of UV rays from the sun on the oil-
water mixture eventually forms chemicals that
can cause cancer.

“I started off (in high school) doing four

sports: ballet, swim, cheer and track,” Cavé said.
“The last thing on my mind was being in a lab
24/7 … I didn’t really think much of it — it was
just a summer. It was cool. They paid me.”

Cavé entered her research in a local science

fair, and ended up winning, despite her last-
minute poster. She then went on to the 2015 Intel
International Science and Engineering Fair and
earned second place out of 2,600 participants.
As part of Cavé’s award, NASA and the MIT Lin-
coln Laboratory named asteroid “2000 GD136”
after her. The award gave Cavé confidence about
the importance of her work and motivated her to
take it further.

“I had to first show that (these carcinogens)

actually exist,” Cavé said. “And then once I
showed that they exist I had to show that they
are harmful, and then after that I moved into
finding a solution.”

Before her research, the methods used to

clean up oil spills weren’t dealing with the car-
cinogens at all. So Cavé invented a carcinogen-
fighting molecule, and turned her research into
her own business — a startup called Mare. Now
she is funded by Chevron, which gave her $1.2

million to continue her research.

“It started off as just the molecule, just the oil

spill, but now I think the company is more based
off of the neutralization of toxins,” Cavé said.
“I’m sure you read articles all the time, if you’re
ever scrolling through Facebook, and you see
something that says: ‘Warning! Don’t use your
deodorant anymore because it will give you can-
cer!’ It can get pretty serious. … We want those
companies to come to us so that we can neutral-
ize whatever carcinogen is in the product with-
out compromising the integrity of the product.”

But Cavé didn’t originally know how to run

a business. Last summer, she was the youngest-
ever attendee of the Global Entrepreneurship
Bootcamp at MIT, where she figured out how to
translate her complicated research into a com-
prehensible marketing platform. Now, she man-
ages the business, has a team of people working
for her and personally connects with Mare’s cli-
ents, including Chevron and Brazilian Blowout.

Cavé also holds two patents and has published

two research papers. Her work with Microsoft
is further proof of her unparalleled intellect. She
taught herself HTML at age 8 and worked for
Microsoft, designing websites for more than a
year while still in high school.

After receiving a full ride to the University,

Cavé enrolled in the College of Engineering,
where she is studying chemical engineering.
While taking a full course load, Cavé also spends
many late nights in the lab continuing her
research. She finds time to be an active member
of the Entrepreneurs Leadership Program —
though she admits that she doesn’t sleep much.

In addition to all her scholastic and scien-

tific pursuits, Cavé is a brand representative for
Lululemon and Francesca’s, advertising their
clothing through her social media posts. Lulule-
mon reached out to Cavé specifically, but she ini-
tiated the partnership with Francesca’s herself.

“I was on a flight from Miami to (Ann Arbor),”

Cave said. “And they lost my luggage. I had a
photoshoot with Humanly magazine … I was
freaking out. It was all of my favorite stuff.”

“I went into disaster mode. I went to the mall

and walked into Francesca’s and was like: ‘Look,
I don’t have any money. The airport lost my stuff.
I have a photoshoot. Is there anything you guys
can do? Can you guys dress me?’ And that was
the start of a relationship. So now, they give me
stuff every two weeks, whenever they get new
shipments.”

Francesca’s and Lululemon were not the

only ones to crave Cavé’s influence, though. Her
brand of female empowerment has been so pro-
lific that MTV scooped Cavé up to do a short seg-
ment for their “A Woman Did That” campaign.
The first one-minute bit was so successful that

the network is planning on having Cavé return
for a weekly segment.

Cavé has already accomplished more than

most college graduates, a fact that was noted by
Congressman Cedric Richmond (D–La.) Feb. 23,
2016, in his speech to the House of Representa-
tives regarding Cavé’s accomplishments. But
these days, Cavé is giving her own speeches.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to say, I’m doing a Ted

Talk in Barcelona on May 4th,” Cavé said. “I’m
actually going to talk about the power of being
obnoxious.”

While Cavé attributes her success to “being

obnoxious,” she pursues everything she does
with vigor and dedication. That may be abrasive
to some, but Cavé has single-handedly managed
to change the world by the age of 19 — and that is
definitely badass.

Keiana Cavé

BY MARGARET KOLCON, Daily Sports Writer

Ben Rathi is, first and foremost, an incredibly

kind person. The friendliness emanating from
the fifth-year senior from Novi when he walks
into Espresso Royale is not the oozing or over-
whelming kind, but mild and genuine. And if
kindness is first, helpfulness is a very close sec-
ond.

While pursuing two degrees in business and

computer science, stopping just two classes short
of a third in biomedical science, Ben has had a
wealth of prestigious internships at software,
finance and health care firms; and founded a
successful, now national-scale, nonprofit orga-
nization that collects unused medical supplies
and delivers them to impoverished countries for

a fraction of their market value. He is aware of
just how successful he already is — whereas oth-
ers might try to downplay their achievements
for the appearance of humility, he talks comfort-
ably and matter-of-factly. He does not hold any
illusions about his success either — he knows he
owes it to much more than just himself.

“I started calculating, and I swear this was

in 5th grade, but I was like, ‘All right, there are 7
billion people in the world,’ income distribution,
looked at some statistics, all that, and I was like,
‘There are probably 6 billion people in the world
who would do anything to have the opportuni-
ties I have,’ “ he tells me.

That gratitude, he says, is what gives him the

motivation to stay in and work on a Friday night,
to the extent that his peers think of him as “the
crazy business kid” or “a machine,” and what
gives him his desire to help. Though business is
his main passion now, coming into college, Ben
planned to help people by becoming a doctor.
After completing his freshman year, he decided
to volunteer in a Nepalese hospital for a month.

“I told myself, ‘All right, if you want to be a

doctor, it’s one thing to do it at a nice hospital
like Michigan or Northwestern, it’s another
thing to feel true depravity and poverty, and
witness people who might not have much
going for them,’ “ he says. The hospital he went
to, he told me, though it was one of the best in
the country, suffered hours-long E.R. waiting
times because of understaffing and underfund-
ing. Patients had to share beds and would often
leave sicker than they came in from a disease
another patient had given them. Simple medi-
cal supplies such as gloves and bedsheets had to
be reused. Working at a hospital back in Novi,
though, restocking shelves, he witnessed a very
different situation, in which unused supplies
were thrown out because of expiration dates.
As well as wanting to have a broader under-
standing of the world, Ben says seeing the inef-
ficiencies of the medical industry is what led
him to leave it for business.

“End goal, I would love to influence policy

change, but I’m not delusional and it’s tough
to lobby against the medical industry,” he
says. “So while the waste is happening, I was
thinking, ‘Is there a way to bridge the gap?’ “

As it turns out, there was. In his sophomore

year, Ben founded Blueprints For Pangaea, a

501(c)(3) nonprofit, with more than $25,000
in prize money from several business compe-
titions. The business, which has now expand-
ed to nine other colleges and universities, has
a model that is quite sustainable. If it can get
the technically expired medical supplies for
$5,000, and their value is $1,000,000, he says,
governments would be happy to pay $6,000.

Weeks away from graduation, and hav-

ing left Blueprints For Pangaea safely in the
hands of the next generation of students,
Ben’s new dream is venture capitalism.

“When you’re in a startup, you have to

commit all your time and effort and energy
into that one startup, and so while I was doing
Blueprints, a lot of cool opportunities came
my way, but I was committed to Blueprints,”
he says. “With VC you get to participate in
multiple startups. You’re on the cutting edge
of technology. And if you couldn’t tell, my life
dream is just … to accelerate our ascent into
the future, I guess, because I think technol-
ogy can improve everyone’s life, in an egali-
tarian way.”

If he had to distill his story into one word,

though, it would be efficiency.

“Academically, I was learning about effi-

ciency on a microscale in CS, right — ‘How
do you get 0.1 seconds faster in the code?’ On
a macrolevel in business — ‘How does Tesla
create a cheaper battery?’ So I’ve been study-
ing efficiency all my life, and I’d like to con-
tinue that.”

So while it may seem like a technical word,

to Ben, it’s just another way of practicing
kindness.

BY ANDREW HIYAMA, Daily Staff Reporter

Ben Rathi

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