Bank of America Announces 2024 Utah Student Leaders

July 11, 2024, Salt Lake City, Utah

Bank of America recently announced three Utah high school students were selected as Student Leaders (#BofAStudentLeaders), an eight-week paid summer internship connecting students to employment, skills development and service. These community-minded students will work with Salt Lake City-based nonprofit, STEM Action Center, furthering its mission to provide STEM education and digital learning tools to public K-12 classrooms while engaging the community. The students will gain practical work and leadership experience while receiving financial education coaching from Bank of America’s Better Money Habits curriculum and earning competitive wages. 

“Preparing a diverse pipeline of community-minded young students to be successful in the workforce is critical to Utah’s long-term economic growth,” said Mori Paulsen, Bank of America Utah president. “The exceptional teens selected for the Student Leaders program will gain practical work and life experience, and the community, in return, gains help from local nonprofits and young adults entering our workforce.”

The class of 2024 Utah Bank of America Student Leaders are:

• Valentina Rodriguez recently graduated from Layton High School where she served as Class President. She also served as a District Student Leader by the Utah State Board of Education while furthering opportunities for her Latino heritage with organizations like Latinos in Action and the Leaders of the Future.

• Anhkhoa Le is a rising senior at Skyline High School and is an International Baccalaureate Diploma Candidate as well as an AP Scholar with Honor. He championed and placed at the national competition for Future Business Leaders of America three times while finalizing in the New York Times Annual 100-Word Narrative Contest. Anhkhoa also serves as President of the Utah Attorney’s General Youth Advisory Committee, where he led roundtables between students and experts on digital welfare and presented digital safety legislation to members of Utah's legislature.

• Jacklyn Wei is a rising senior at Hillcrest High School and founded the nonprofit organization Chess United, which aims to teach people to play the game of chess. Additionally, as Director of Compost Utah, Jacklyn helped create and maintain a community composting system, which has saved over 750 pounds of food within the Salt Lake City region.

Since 2004, Student Leaders has engaged more than 4,500 students and invested $42 million in more than 500 local nonprofits as a critical part of the bank’s long-standing effort to build pathways to economic mobility across nearly 100 markets.  Along with Student Leaders, Bank of America is connecting more than 13 teens and young adults to paid jobs and internships in Utah with various departments in the Salt Lake County Mayor’s Office through its Summer Youth Employment Program.

Later this summer, the students will also travel to Washington, D.C. for a week-long, all-expenses-paid, national leadership summit to learn how nonprofits, governments and businesses collaborate to meet local needs. 

See TechBuzz News' coverage of the 2023 Bank of America Student Leader cohort.