PURSUING CREATIVITY, LEADERSHIP & COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT EMANI LARKIN ’23

BY MAURA C. CICCARELLI, FREELANCE WRITER

Throughout her Upper School years at Tower Hill, Emani Larkin ’23 has pursued many activities that center around three themes: creativity, leadership and community involvement.

Larkin remembers how welcoming everyone was at a Tower Hill open house when she was in eighth grade, the highest grade her charter school went to.

“I saw so many opportunities for leadership and so many places for growth that I honestly would not have gone anywhere else,” says Larkin, who is vice president of the Student Government Association (SGA) and is a Green Key student ambassador, supporting admission events and tours for prospective students.

Creative Pursuits

So far, she has been an actress, choreographer and vocalist in three theater productions. She also was the lead and dance captain/ choreographer for the fall 2021 production of Puffs or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic, a parody of the Harry Potter series. Other shows included You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Sideways Stories from the Wayside School and Emma A Pop Musical.

She’s also won a number of poetry writing awards. Most recently, she won a silver key for poetry for “Ego Death” and an honorable mention for her poem, “The Fruitful Fortress” from the Delaware Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. In her junior year, her poem, “When the World was New,” won an honorable mention from the same competition.

Volunteering

Her list of community-related activities is considerable. Here are a few:

She’s co-leader for the Delaware Homeless Initiative, a Tower Hill program that raises funds and conducts drives to support homeless shelters in the Wilmington area.

In 2022, she was a founding member and organizer of the Tower Hill “It’s in Our Blood” team, which raised the Delaware state record of nearly $163,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

From 2021 through this year, she’s been a volunteer with the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY) Program. Team members focus on discovering creative solutions to world problems and begin initiatives in their local community.

She also was a junior year co-chair and senior year chair of Tower Hill’s Social Justice Board, planning the annual schoolwide symposium and communicating with the administration about social justice concerns at the school. And, she’s co-leader of Tower Hill’s Black Student Union, which gives black students a safe place to engage in discourse, make friends and voice concerns.

Toward The Future

On the academic side, Larkin is in the Global Scholars program and is completing the Laurel Society honors thesis along with her regular school curriculum. The College Board named her an AP Scholar with Distinction and gave her the African American Recognition Award.

She’s also a scholar and a mentee in the Leading Youth Through Empowerment (LYTE) initiative, which provides students from underrepresented backgrounds with a variety of resources to attend college.

She’ll begin studying psychology and political science at Northwestern University in the fall.

“Psychology is pretty similar to why I enjoy creating things so much,” says Larkin. “I like exploring the world and thinking critically about how we as humans interact with our surroundings and each other. With political science, it’s about taking what we learn in psychology and applying it to the real world and helping people seek justice.”

She got a taste of working in government with two summertime internships through FLii—the Future Leaders Internship Initiative.

First, she worked for Delaware Lt. Governor Bethany Hall-Long researching and writing issue briefs and project proposals.

“Lt. Governor Long really placed an emphasis on hearing from the community, so I helped her make calls and took notes with different leaders in the Delaware Black community, the arts community and the religious community,” she says. “It was a monumental experience and it is why I’m interested in politics and justice.”

Dream And Achieve

The overarching theme of her time at Tower Hill, she says, is to never limit yourself based on what you think your ability is.

“In freshman year, I never could have imagined that I would have been a part of so many different, wonderful things here at Tower Hill,” she says. “Just dream and imagine that you’re going to be really valuable and then you will be.”

She adds, “Sometimes we can get so overwhelmed with being perfect and getting accepted into college. Have fun and focus on diversifying your experience to where you can have the most fun.”