He met U.S. congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden.
He’s Harvard-bound and now, 18-year-old Roberto Quesada can say he is the first Latino salutatorian at his Brooklyn Technical High School in New York.
As the son of immigrants, he hopes the honor can show the nation how “we’re capable of so much.”
“For me, this was a really big moment because I didn’t expect to be taught at a school like Brooklyn Tech,” said Quesada. “It’s 1,500 students but students actually have to test into the school. … I knew that all the students there are already very academically driven and very smart.”
Quesada was accepted to Harvard, has a full scholarship and altogether, has also earned over $150,000 in scholarships through different organizations.
And he wasn’t the only one at Brooklyn Tech who made history. His classmate, Afifa Tanisa, became the first hijabi valedictorian and will attend Columbia University, majoring in applied mathematics. She also comes from an immigrant family, she told the school’s newspaper.
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Quesada ‘inspired’ by immigrant parents
Quesada started studying to get into Brooklyn Tech in seventh grade. Since attending school there, he has received multiple awards for his hard work, including a Coca-Cola scholarship that is awarded to 150 students out of 91,000 applicants.
Going to Harvard has been a goal of Quesada’s since freshman year, he said.
He plans to pursue a degree in government and is passionate about educational equity. It’s deeply personal for him because he has often been one of just a few Hispanic students at his school.
“Only 7% of the student body is Hispanic,” he said. “I’ve often been the only Hispanic student in many of my classes and that’s put me in a tough spot many times because I had to speak on issues like immigration.”
He is the son of Honduran immigrants Lucy Pagoada-Quesada and Carlos Quesada, who came to the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s.
His mother moved to the U.S. speaking no English and went to school in the New York City public school system as a young Latina in the Bronx, he said.
“She was able to attend college but she told me that one of the biggest lessons she wanted to impart on me was this idea that she worked very hard,” Quesada said. “She’s an immigrant trying to make it in New York City and the United States without much. That really inspired me.”
He said he’s the first person in his family to go to an Ivy League university and he’s proud of that. Being raised by such hardworking people has shaped everything he does, he said.
“I see a lot of the rhetoric now that’s anti immigration or that speaks poorly about Latinos and groups that come in,” he said. “What I want people to see in many ways with my story is that immi