There was a point a few years ago where Max Perkins’ parents asked him if dance was a hobby or something more serious. “It’s for real,” Perkins remembers telling them. Recently, Perkins, a senior at New Trier High School, was one of 20 student chosen from among 7,000 applicants to be a U.S. Presidential Scholar […]
Olivia Passalino, 18, of Lake Forest, remembers the first day she started teaching dance classes. Passalino and her friend, Nina Tannenbaum, had decided to form a new organization, Dancer to Dancer, to offer free dance classes to underserved children in Highland Park. On the first day in September of 2010, a gaggle of little girls […]
To say that Aron Pobereskin is the next Charlie Trotter or Grant Achatz isn’t making a prediction. It’s simply stating the ambitious goal that Aron has set for himself. “I want to be one of the top chefs of my generation in this country. I know that sounds egotistical, but it’s a personal challenge and […]
Damiana Andonova came to the North Shore from a small town in Bulgaria when she was in second grade. Her parents immigrated five years earlier. “We had sheep and goats,” she recalls. “To make do was difficult.” Her experience as an immigrant has given Damiana a broad worldview and a strong desire to give back—a […]
Garrett Jones has his priorities in order. Family and school first, then basketball. “My mom always told me, ‘If you don’t have your academics straight, you won’t go where you want to go,’” he says. And he listened to his mother: He’s headed to University of New Hampshire this fall to major in history and […]
Like all kids, Mason Isaac loves presents, but the kind of gifts that get him jumping up and down aren’t little plastic toys or electronic gadgets. Mason gets excited by envelopes with donations to save the polar bears or build a school in Afghanistan. “I have plenty of toys,” he says. So since his second […]
