When I started to write this article (well, now, lol), I remembered what Kristina Wiese, teacher of English and French from Germany, told me: “It’s important that you are chairing and still doing MUNs so you can prove to the girls that there is room for them here too.“ Robina Azizi is a perfect example of this message.

I want to work in the EU. I feel super jealous of Matthias, he literally gave me a tour of the Council before I had to rush off. Semi-retired at 23, living in Brussels and working at Austria’s Permanent Representation to the EU (yes, that’s real), Matthias is basically MUN personified. 

At the University of Virginia, there’s no talking about Model UN without mentioning Mariam Parray and Calvin Pan. As second-years leading the charge in UVA’s International Relations Organization, they’ve gone from being high school delegates to running entire conferences and doing it together. Mariam is double majoring in Global Public Health and Economics. She’s always been a go-getter. In high school, she was MUN president, led MUN events, and was all about community leadership. Calvin, also a second-year student, is the current President of IRO. He spent part of high school in China, where MUN was huge, bringing that energy back to UVA.

I met Lukas Bryant through mutual MUN circles, the kind of person who somehow manages to be humble and wildly accomplished. He’s a senior in high school from North Carolina, and he's been running his school’s MUN club since sixth grade. “I went to my first conference as an independent,” he told me.