Brandon Willabus is 16, which means he cannot yet vote, but last November he sat across from a head of state and asked him about oil.
The interview took place in Guyana, where Willabus, a junior at his New York-area high school, spoke with President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali about the country’s rapidly expanding petroleum sector and its emerging role in the global economy. It is not the kind of assignment typically handed to a high school student, but Willabus arrived with more preparation than his age might suggest: two years on his school’s Model United Nations Travel Team, where he now serves as vice president, and a competitive career in Policy Debate, the events-based discipline that requires students to argue political and philosophical questions on national stages.
The trip also carried a personal thread. A decade earlier, Willabus appeared on the cover of his older sister Anaya Lee Willabus’s first book, “The Day Mohan Found His Confidence,” a project tied to the Guyanese community the family has long been connected to. The interview with President Ali, he said, felt like a continuation of that connection rather than a departure from it.
Back home, Willabus’s activities read like a list assembled by committee, except that he is the one running most of the committees. He chairs his school’s Civics Committee, leads its Peer Tutoring Program, and sits on a Student AI Task Force charged with shaping how artificial intelligence is used by students and faculty — a role that puts him at the table for policy debates that many school administrators are still working out themselves. He is also a Lead Ambassador for admissions and outreach, and a published student writer.
Outside the classroom, his interests widen further. He plays varsity soccer and basketball. He is training as a student pilot. And this year he interned with New York State Supreme Court Justice Hon. Joanne D. Quiñones, an experience he has cited as a turning point in his interest in the law. He wants, eventually, to become an attorney — a goal he traces directly back to the debate rounds and Model UN sessions where he first learned to build an argument and defend it under pressure.
He also serves as president of the First Responders Leo Club, a youth service organization affiliated with Lions Clubs International, where his focus has been on community engagement projects run by and for young people.
That range of engagement earned Willabus formal recognition this month. On August 24, 2026, he received the Excellence Youth Achievement Award from the Miss Caricom International Foundation Inc. (MCIF), a United Nations-accredited NGO, presented by Ambassador Dr. Monica Sanchez, the foundation’s Founder and CEO. The award cited his leadership, academic excellence, civic engagement, and commitment to service, with particular mention of his work in Model United Nations, Policy Debate, aviation, athletics, public service, and global affairs, and was issued under the foundation’s Platinum Who’s Who Award program.
The same day, at the United Nations, Willabus received a second honor: the Danny Glover Power of Dreams Youth Achievement Award, named for actor and humanitarian Danny Glover and presented by Ambassador Dr. Monica Sanchez. The certificate carries a line attributed to Glover: “The power of a dream begins with the courage to believe, grows through education and service, and becomes a legacy when it inspires others to rise.”
Taken individually, none of these commitments is unusual for an ambitious teenager. Taken together, they describe a student who has treated adolescence less as a holding pattern than as an apprenticeship — one spent testing which of his interests, in law, in international affairs, in public service, might eventually become a career rather than an extracurricular.
For now, Willabus is still balancing a debate tournament schedule with soccer practice, and a student pilot’s logbook with homework. What comes next, he suggests, will look a great deal like what came before: more research, more arguments to prepare, and more rooms he has not yet been in.
