Paiden Castelblanco

Student at Asheville High School

Paiden, 16, is the youngest of three ‘ridiculously good-looking’ Castelblanco children. Her Abuela, a mythical Green Card Lottery winner, is the cause for a lottery-fixation (and pride) that consumes her Colombian-American family. Paiden is the living illustration of Youngest Child Syndrome; risk-taking, social, and persistent are just a few of the symptoms she exhibits. What’s less apparent is the empowerment this diagnosis has brought her as a young Latina woman in the tourist-ridden city of Asheville. A proud student advocate for educational equity, Paiden serves on the Asheville City Schools Foundation Board of Directors, delivers cultural competency professional development to her district educators through the Racial Equity Ambassadors Program, and volunteers as an assistant in her school’s Exceptional Children’s classroom. Paiden maintains a knack for STEM and zeal for interdisciplinary research, both of which have been nurtured by the Online Program at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Beyond the classroom, she’s ranked top 10 in the state for Pole Vault. Invigorated with aspirational capital, Paiden’s dream is to serve as an attorney under Bryan Stevenson at the Equal Justice Initiative. Passionate about dismantling systems of oppression through the lens of policy, the generational momentum of Latinidad stands in her favor to make this dream a reality.