10 years later: See what 8 Long Island 2015 valedictorians are up to now

Attorneys graduating from top law schools, influencers, entrepreneurs and a doctor.

Ten years after their 2015 high school graduation, these Long Island valedictorians are thriving, but they have all faced their challenges.

Those interviewed stressed the importance of staying flexible and open to new paths that unfold along life’s journey.

Take Natalie Kalukeerthie, who thought she would pursue a career in music, but reconsidered once the COVID-19 pandemic hit and live performances shut down. Now she’s a data analyst and a part-time cosplay influencer.

“What you might want to do two years ago might not be what you want now,” she said.

Read on for more wise words from some wise young adults.

— Vera Chinese, LI Life editor

Daniel Beagen

High school: St. Anthony’s High School, Huntington Station

Education: Cornell University

Today: Engagement manager at Trinity Life Sciences

Lives in: Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan

Ten years after high school graduation, the biggest lesson Daniel Beagen would share with new graduates is to be willing to say yes.

Yes to moving somewhere new, yes to trying something new. “Don’t be too quick to judge a new path, be willing to give it a try," Beagen said. "You can always pivot away from it."

Beagen's "say yes" moment was taking a business-focused health care consulting job in the Boston area after college. “I’m happy I didn’t let my prejudice to be in New York stand in my way,” he said. “It was a better professional opportunity and a new experience for me.”

Beagen, 28, said during college he realized his biomedical engineering major would probably lead him to a Ph.D. and a lab research job or medical school, not paths he wanted to take. And his lack of interest in pursuing those fields led to no prestigious summer internship at the end of his junior year, which hampered his postgraduation job hunt.

After graduation he landed a position as a research associate at a small health care consulting company in Lexington, Massachusetts, then moved to New York two years later to work at a different consulting firm. He took a chance by signing a lease on a new apartment in New York City before he had a job. “But it has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life,” he said.

Beagen said he likes the fast pace of consulting work, being on the forefront of life-sciences research and the opportunity to have a broad impact working with different clients, as well as personal growth in presenting reports to higher-level management.

He’s learned to embrace new and potentially uncomfortable situations. “You learn very quickly that no one has it figured out completely, and life is about the journey you take and not about the destination,” he said.

Compare the current you to the former you, he said.

“Have you personally improved? If yes, you’re going in the right direction.”

Prioritize what matters, he said, and keep to a routine that focuses on eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep and moderating food and alcohol intake.

Beagen said he’s learned to be less rigid since high school. “I’ve learned — and sometimes been forced — to pivot and change," he said. "I believe I’ve come out a better person as I’ve gone through these transition periods in my life.”

He credits St. Anthony’s High School with providing him an environment where he could make mistakes while learning how to engage in a new social environment. “It was really home," he said.

Natalie Kalukeerthie

High School: Brentwood High School Sonderling Center

Education: Queens College, CUNY Graduate Center

Today: Senior data analyst at Publicis Groupe

Lives in: New York City

A decade after delivering the valedictory speech at Brentwood High School, Natalie Kalukeerthie reflects on how a dual love for math and music shaped her path — even when life kept taking unexpected turns.

Kalukeerthie said she did not have a plan mapped out when she started college.

“I didn't really have too many ideas of what I wanted to do career-wise when I was in high school.," she said.

Kalukeerthie, 28, majored in both math and music at Queens College, initially expecting to pursue music full time. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit shortly after college graduation, live performances were halted, which altered her trajectory as a professional musician.

She took internships in data analytics, which led her to a new and rewarding profession. Today, she works as a senior data analyst for Publicis Groupe while moonlighting as a part-time influencer making cosplay and animation themed content on Instagram and TikTok.

In addition to her full-time job, Kalukeerthie is pursuing a Master of Science in data science at CUNY Graduate Center, with plans to graduate at the end of 2026.

"Data science is fascinating because it combines creativity with logic," she said. "There’s an art to finding insights hidden in numbers and presenting them in a way people can understand. I love that balance. It's a lot like music in that sense — patterns, structures and storytelling come together."

She credits her diverse high school experience in Brentwood in part for her success.

“I think learning to be around all different types of people in high school lets me make friends easily,” she said. “Juggling so many extracurriculars and schoolwork helped with learning how to take on a lot of things at once.”

In the past decade, Kalukeerthie has studied in Japan and adopted a “very cute cat.” But some of her most meaningful growth came from learning to adapt when life didn’t go as planned.

“What you might want to do two years ago might not be what you want now,” she said. “These are definitely things I'm still working on.”

She’s also learned the importance of giving herself grace. “Even small accomplishments are important," she said. "Be kinder to yourself and don’t stress yourself out!”

Her advice to today’s graduating seniors: “Thinking about your future is definitely important, but make sure to take it one step at a time and remember to have fun! Don’t be afraid to ask for help or advice from others, you might learn something invaluable from it.”

Victoria DiCeglio

High School: Lawrence High School, Cedarhurst

Education: University of Miami

Today: Performance marketing manager at Recruitics

Lives in: New York City

Victoria DiCeglio has always been someone with a plan.

When she graduated from Lawrence High School as valedictorian, she already knew she was headed for a business career and made every effort to prepare herself for it.

“I had a goal to become a leader in business, particularly in the marketing field,” said DiCeglio, 28. “I focused on business classes and joined the international business club, DECA.”

She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in business administration, marketing and management from the University of Miami, graduating with a perfect 4.0 GPA. From there, she launched a career in Manhattan, working in marketing roles across public relations, real estate and recruitment before settling into her role at Recruitics, a recruiting advertising/marketing agency.

“In my current role, I have the most autonomy ... which has allowed me to surpass performance expectations,” she said.

Leadership and service were values instilled in DiCeglio early. “Serving as a leader of several service and business organizations allowed me to develop myself both morally and intellectually,” she said. “It also showed me what it is like to serve as a leader that people respect and rely on.”

In recent years, DiCeglio’s professional path has expanded into personal wellness. At 25, she made the decision to freeze her eggs after experiencing hormonal issues that could affect her future fertility. The experience sparked a deep interest in women’s health and holistic medicine.

“I am particularly interested in learning about healthy diets and lifestyles to support women’s hormones, and mental, physical and emotional health,” she said. She now incorporates acupuncture, meditation and nutrition research into her daily life and shares what she’s learned with others.

In her personal life, DiCeglio and her boyfriend, who share a love of travel, are preparing to relocate to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on May 12. Both secured employer-sponsored relocations and look forward to better weather and being closer to family. Florida, she said, already feels like a second home.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

-Victoria DiCeglio

Traveling has long been a passion for DiCeglio. Some of her favorite destinations include Tokyo and Maui, where she found inspiration in the ways different cultures connect people with nature. She hopes that moving to Florida, where outdoor living is a way of life, will open up even more opportunities for exploration and personal growth.

DiCeglio said one of her challenges is managing her perfectionist tendencies. “It serves me well in the corporate world and in relationships, but it’s something I have to actively balance,” she said.

The biggest lesson she’s learned? “The mind is incredibly powerful,” DiCeglio said. “Beliefs will dictate outcomes. It’s absolutely critical to think positive thoughts and create healthy habits to rewire the mind.”

Her advice for today’s graduates is simple: “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” she said. “It can be started with your own thoughts and actions.”

Kiara Powell

High School: Holy Trinity Diocesan High School, Hicksville

Education: Hofstra University, New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine

Today: Resident at Plainview Hospital

Lives in: Westbury

Kiara Powell achieved her childhood dream of becoming a doctor while living on Long Island for most of her education, traveling extensively and helping fellow New Yorkers overcome their own career and health care obstacles.

“Being a doctor was something I wanted to pursue since middle school,” said Powell, 27, of Westbury, who in March joined the family medicine residency program at Plainview Hospital.

Powell credited her alma mater, Holy Trinity Diocesan High School in Hicksville, where she was valedictorian in 2015, with allowing her to “excel inside the classroom” as well as in extracurricular activities. There, she was captain of the varsity tennis and track teams and joined the math and foreign language clubs.

The opportunity to succeed in multiple areas provided balance, taught her discipline and “to maintain grit, focus and perseverance” — qualities she applied in college and medical school, Powell said.

She said she wanted to “stay local for school and also be able to meet a lot of people at a decent-sized university.” Hofstra University in Hempstead, which she said recruited her from Holy Trinity, “seemed like a perfect fit.” She received an academic scholarship and earned a bachelor’s degree in premedical studies in 2019.

Powell continued in a dual-degree program at New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine in Old Westbury, earning a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree and a master’s degree in medical and health care simulation. The latter field involves creating and managing learning programs featuring health care scenarios simulated by actors and specialized mannequins, Powell said.

As a medical student, Powell said she also reached beyond the classroom to mentor undergraduates at SUNY Old Westbury and Lehman College in the Bronx. She said she served on her medical school’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee and helped create a health equity workshop to improve “access to health care and quality care for all communities.”

Powell took a public health internship in 2018 as a patient navigator at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, where she said she assisted families of pediatric patients in overcoming “socioeconomic barriers” such as accessing housing, food and utilities.

Throughout her school years, Powell said she has been surprised at her ability “to overcome impostor syndrome time and time again when I thought I couldn’t push through the self-doubt.”

She advises others to do the same and to press on in the face of hardship.

“When you push through  ... adversities, you will later on look back and be proud of overcoming that brief period of being uncomfortable,” she said.

Meagan Diana Loyst

High School: Sachem High School North

Education: Boston College, Oxford University

Today: Founder and CEO of Gen Z VCs, writer for The Times of London, head of social media for the education technology platform ClassDojo

Lives in: London

Meagan Diana Loyst started creating content a year after graduating college during the pandemic, beginning with only around 100 followers. This, however, would turn out to be the start of something much bigger.

Today Loyst has more than 300,000 followers across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter) and heads social media for ClassDojo, an education technology firm that makes classroom management software for elementary schools. She also writes a monthly column for The Times of London as their business section’s dedicated Gen Z expert.

“I’ve always loved creating content,” she said. “I’m a huge advocate for building a personal brand while you’re young.”

Loyst, 27, said it all came out of interests she first nurtured in high school.

“I was very lucky that Sachem North had so many opportunities to learn about business,” she said. “More importantly, that I had great teachers who encouraged me to go into business.”

While in high school, Loyst said she was president of DECA and the business honor society, interned at Citibank in a program for Long Island high school students and won a $20,000 scholarship from Nassau Educators Federal Credit Union.

She began her college career at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College with an undecided major.

Although she had nearly 10 internships in high school and college, she preferred working with people more than poring over financial documents.

“Each one [internship] helped me understand what I liked as much as what I didn’t like,” she said, noting a particularly positive experience at Girls Who Invest, a nonprofit focused on women investors. “I really enjoyed learning about what makes individual companies successful and being an expert on a particular investment sector.”

Loyst in 2020 founded Gen Z VCs, a community of Gen Z investors and founders with 30,000 members from 80 countries. Forbes in 2022 listed her on one of its 30 Under 30 lists when she was 24, and she was also named the National Venture Capital Association’s “Rising Star.”

“Gen Z VCs helped to bring young people in the industry together to empower one another,” she said.

I’m living a life I never could have dreamed existed when I was in high school.

-Meagan Diana Loyst

Loyst does marketing strategy for founders, Fortune 500 companies and venture-backed startups, using social media to help companies grow.

She also consults for Sony Pictures and does public speaking at conferences all over the world, including TechBBQ in Copenhagen, Bits & Pretzels in Munich, Slush in Helsinki and others.

“The best thing I’ve done is bet on myself continually and diversify my professional opportunities,” she added.

Her high school studies pointed her in the direction of her career, but Loyst said she could never have anticipated what her world looks like now.

“I’m living a life I never could have dreamed existed when I was in high school,” she said.

Sapna Rampersaud

High School: Brentwood High School Ross Center

Education: Harvard University, Boston University, American University

Today: She passed the Washington, D.C. bar exam in November.

Lives in: Washington, D.C.

Sapna Rampersaud has been a journalist, a middle school teacher, an international traveler and even dabbled in Parisian pastry-making on her way to achieving her high school dream of becoming a lawyer in Washington, D.C.

“If the last 10 years has taught me anything, it has been to be open-minded,” said Rampersaud, 27, an education law and policy attorney with a specialty in disability rights. “I’ve had a lot of opportunities to grow personally, academically and professionally,” Rampersaud said by telephone from Ghent, Belgium.

After graduating as valedictorian in 2015 from the Brentwood High School Ross Center, Rampersaud earned a bachelor’s degree in government, history and French in 2019 from Harvard University. She spent breaks building her resume with a political fellowship at The Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and taking a course in modern military conflict at the prestigious American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. During a summer 2017 magazine internship at The National Review, she published articles on law and the courts, as well as politics and policy.

Rampersaud also gained experience at the front of the classroom. She taught fifth and sixth graders special education English language arts at a charter school outside of Boston after enrolling in a professional development program at Teach for America, a leadership training organization. A master’s in education earned in 2021 from Boston University led to advocacy work for people with special needs, she said.

Rampersaud also held to her high school dream of becoming an attorney working in government relations. She moved to Washington, D.C., to attend the American University Washington College of Law, where she said she worked in the Department of Justice’s Disability Rights Section, for the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. She spent a semester abroad at the University of Ghent in Belgium, studying European Union law and diplomacy.

Last year, Rampersaud graduated cum laude, passed the D.C. bar exam and, in November, was licensed to practice law. She returned to Europe for leisure travel, got engaged in Paris and married in Belgium.

Since 2022, Rampersaud has visited more than 50 cities in 20 countries, including Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Turkey, Lithuania and Ireland. Her globe-trotting inspired a passion for baking, explored in pastry-making classes in Paris, and other cities. “I’d love to be a certified pastry chef one day as well,” she said.

Rampersaud’s advice to 2025 graduates: “Make your academic and professional experiences your own and do what you love or what interests you — while still having your big-picture end goal in mind!”

Zachary Marcone

High School: Kings Park High School

Education: Columbia University, Yenching Academy of Peking University

Today: Student at Stanford Law School

Lives in: Stanford, California

When Zachary Marcone graduated from high school, he wanted to become a physicist. Since then, he has grown less focused on the laws of nature, and more invested in the laws of man.

“I was more interested in learning how the human world works than the physical world,” said Marcone, a first-year student at Stanford Law School. “I think law is how you understand the human world.”

He said he doesn’t plan to pursue criminal law as a prosecutor or defense attorney, but is drawn to international aspects of law such as how sovereign states interact with one another or how commerce flows across borders.

As a teenager, he said his idea of traveling was visiting the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan or the Bronx Zoo. In the years since he graduated at the top of his class at Kings Park High School he has broadened his understanding of the world by studying abroad and traveling much of the globe.

Marcone, 28, earned a degree in China studies and law from Yenching Academy of Peking University in Beijing in 2021. In addition to extended time inmainland China, he worked in Uganda as a research fellow and in Hong Kong, performing legal research at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

He traveled to nearly 50 countries, including India, Indonesia, Australia and South Africa.

“I was abroad basically since I graduated from Columbia,” he said. “I think you learn a lot when you go to a new place, and it helps you understand your own culture and country better.”

It is important to listen to others for advice and guidance, but make sure that every decision is your own and is not forced upon you by others or by society.

-Zachary Marcone

He credits classes at Kings Park, such as AP Physics and AP World History, for initially opening his eyes “to so many fascinating things.”

Marcone, who expects to graduate from Stanford in 2027, is taking internationally oriented classes and continuing his travels. He’ll be working in Rome this summer with the U.N. World Food Programme, which describes itself as the world’s largest humanitarian organization.

He stressed the need to strike a balance between making your own way and listening to those who have gone before you.

“It’s not always good to follow the preordained path,” he said. “On the other hand, when you’re a young person, you don’t have infinite wisdom. You need to listen to other people.”

Still, Marcone advises other high school graduates to think critically about every choice they make.

“It is important to listen to others for advice and guidance, but make sure that every decision is your own and is not forced upon you by others or by society,” he said.

Monika Dharia

High School: Mineola High School

Education: Duke University

Today: Founder and CEO, GreenGear Supply Co.

Lives in: Somerville, Massachusetts

When Monika Dharia graduated from Mineola High School in 2015, she thought she had a clear vision for the future — one that involved environmental law, grad school and a traditional career.

But a decade later, she’s running her own company, making sustainable ponchos from sugarcane and partnering with NFL teams and national parks.

“I had this plan that I’d go work at [global consulting firm] Bain & Company for two years, then I would go to business school, then I would go back into a professional career again to do entrepreneurship,” Dharia said. “That was my 10-year plan, but during the pandemic, everything shifted and I was like, ‘I’m just going to do entrepreneurship now.’ ”

Dharia, 27, is the founder and CEO of GreenGear Supply Co., a sustainable apparel company she launched while studying environmental engineering at Duke, in Durham, North Carolina. The idea was born out of frustration while helping organize campus events.

Dharia couldn’t find any rain ponchos that were made sustainably.

With her background in environmental research, which she developed through a hands-on science program at Mineola High School, Dharia decided to create one herself.

“Some claimed to be biodegradable, but they just broke down into microplastics,” Dharia said. “Others were compostable, but only under industrial conditions and released methane when sent to landfills.”

GreenGear’s ponchos are made from ethically sourced sugarcane and designed for reuse. The company has supplied its eco-conscious products to clients like the Philadelphia Eagles, REI, Zion and Glacier national parks and the New York Road Runners, which used the ponchos for event staff and volunteers during the New York City Marathon.

One of her most exciting recent developments? A potential partnership with major music festivals and a push to move manufacturing to the United States, with a mission to hire people with barriers to employment, such as formerly incarcerated individuals or those without high school diplomas, she said.

Be ready to pivot. I had a whole road map laid out, and then I took a leap earlier than expected. I’m glad I did.

-Monika Dharia

When she’s not running a business, Dharia is simply running. She said she is a four-time marathoner who qualified for the Boston Marathon and completed it in April. She also enjoys biking on Boston’s Minuteman Trail and grabbing vegan ice cream with friends at her favorite spot, FoMu.

Since graduating from Duke in 2019 and moving to the Boston area, Dharia said her roots in Mineola continue to shape her values and her gratitude.

“The teachers went above and beyond,” she said.

As for what she’d tell her high school self now?

“Have goals, but don’t over-plan your life,” Dharia said. “Be ready to pivot. I had a whole road map laid out, and then I took a leap earlier than expected. I’m glad I did.”

Correction: Daniel Beagen's name was misspelled in a previous version of this story