DHS junior one of 4 students from U.S. picked for global conference

Goal is to become international correspondent for CNN

Mya LaGrange (center) poses with other students from across the globe at a young leaders conference.

Destrehan junior Mya LaGrange is making her way towards a future in international journalism.

A major stepping stone for her was the Global Young Leaders Conference held this month.

Mya, 16, was one of only four students from the United States invited to attend the conference that was held for one week in Washington D.C. and one week in New York City.
There were a total of about 250 students, ages 15 to 18, in attendance from all over the world.

The goal of the conference was to give high-achieving students a greater understanding of their roles as global ambassadors. While at the conference, they studied communications, diplomacy, human rights, law, economics and held model United Nations sessions.

“It was really cool because you got to read about the actual U.N. case, but we could come out with a different outcome,” Mya said.

A major focus of the event was to give students the opportunity to explore cultural differences firsthand. While at the conference, Mya met and worked with people from many other countries, including Trinidad, Jamaica, Scotland, Germany, Mombassa, Argentina and China.

She said her motivation to attend national conferences and network has a lot to do with how she was raised.

“My parents raised me to do all that I can do,” she said. “I feel like you’ve got to be the change you want to see and we’re the future leaders so we might as well start now.”

Mya is the daughter of Avis LaGrange and Sgt. Dwayne LaGrange of the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office.

This is the sixth conference that Mya has attended nationally through the Congressional Youth Leadership Conference.

In order to attend each conference, she had to be anonymously nominated each year by an authority figure, such as a teacher or church leader.

Mya hopes that the experience she gained from this conference and others she has attended will help her achieve her dream of becoming a broadcast journalist.

“I would like to be an international correspondent for CNN or MSNBC because those are my favorite news stations. I watch them every day,” she said.

After graduation, she hopes to attend either Syracuse University in New York or the University of California Berkeley and major in mass communications or broadcast journalism.