Community voices

Angelina Xu 

Angelina Xu (she/her) is a class of 2024 graduate from Richard Montgomery High School in Montgomery County, where she received an International Baccalaureate Diploma. From this August, she will study environmental science alongside public policy and economics at Harvard College.

She served as president in the Maryland Association of Student Councils, where she presented on youth needs and policy recommendations to the Maryland State Board of Education, Maryland Association of Secondary School Principals, and legislators such as Representative Steny Hoyer.

As the advocacy initiatives director for her county’s student government association, she trained students to lobby for student-related bills to the Maryland state legislature and leadership administrations. She also served as her school’s class treasurer.

Outside of student government, she has been recognized as the countywide champion for her school’s debate team, and is a co-founder of Compostology, a youth-led non-profit organization dedicated to implementing school composting and food recovery programmes across Maryland.

Thanks to her work leading more than 30 programmes, Compostology has received the President’s Environmental Youth Award and the Governor’s Youth Service Award. In recognition of her work, Angelina has received the U.S. Presidential Scholar award and a full-tuition Cameron Impact Scholarship, is a Coca-Cola Scholar, and was a United States Senate Youth Program delegate.  

Maximilian Belyantsev 

Maximilian Belyantsev is an incoming student at Columbia University in the City of New York, studying financial economics. He is a class of 2024 graduate from the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme at Richard Montgomery High School (RMHS) in Rockville, Maryland. Maximilian served as editor-in-chief of the RMHS student newspaper, The Tide; chapter president of RMHS Distributive Education Club of America (DECA); president of the RMHS philosophy club; editor-in-chief of an independent philosophy journal, Conundrum; and director of communications and public relations for Sami Saeed’s successful campaign to become the student member of the Montgomery County Board of Education.  

Maximilian is a 2024 U.S. Presidential Scholar—a distinction awarded to the top 0.0045% of graduating high school seniors across the USA. He is a 2024 National Merit Scholarship Program finalist, and a 2023 Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation Coolidge Senators Program distinction recipient. He received the 2024 President's Award for Educational Excellence and a Maryland State Seal of Biliteracy in English, French, and Russian.  

Maximilian is grateful to his family, friends, and IB teachers for their expertise, kindness, and support. He is a print editor at the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review and is interested in consulting, finance, and law.