Tanatswa Mashangeni
Tanatswa Mashangeni, 17, is a senior at Research Triangle High School. She was born in Zimbabwe, moved to the United States as an infant and now lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina. She is in the process of applying to multiple colleges across the United States and hopes to someday attend medical school for psychiatry. Her school, founded in 2012, is an independent public charter that draws from 11 counties and 63 middle schools across the Raleigh-Durham area. It is part of the America Achieves Global Learning Network, which supports schools to participate in the O.E.C.D. Test for Schools (an international exam based on PISA) with the goal of using the results to help schools raise the bar.