Miami Palmetto High School junior Brooke Wilensky was named a Panther of Distinction at the recent awards ceremony.
Wilensky has been the co-chair of JVC Teen Day of Service (formerly known as J Serve), a student run organization sponsored by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. JVC Teen Day of Service organizes a major county-wide Mitzvah Day on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January. The teens plan and complete a myriad of projects to help the community.
She’s been a member since seventh grade and a South Miami-Dade chair since ninth grade.
This past January, one of the projects was to bake Challah bread for the Kosher food banks.
“We all got together at the Jewish Federation,” she says. “We had a presentation on how to make Challah and then we all got to make it together.”
She’s also the 2023-2024 Teen Representative for the Greater Miami Jewish Federation Board of Directors.
This year, Wilensky is the Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer for Volunteering Miami, the student led organization that connects students with volunteer possibilities.
“I helped our CEO with creating a DEI statement for applications,” she says.
She worked with the DEI team before she became the chief officer.
At Palmetto she’s the incoming president of Interact, a community service club.
“Before COVID we used to put on a talent show, Panthers Got Talent,” she says. “Next year
we’re going to bring it back. It’s going to be fun.”
She’s a member of the National Honor Society, the National English Honor Society and is Vice President of Communications for Rho Kappa. She competes on a history bowl team.
Wilensky was the Class of 2025 co-treasurer her freshman year. Next year she’ll be the student council board co-treasurer.
As treasurer, she helped budget the homecoming dance and reached out to the vendors and got pricing.
“I made the best event possible with the amount of money we had,” she says. “It was fun.
You have to sit down and see how much money you have. It taught me a lot about money
management.”
She’s going to be the print Editor-in-Chief for The Panther newspaper. It comes out once a month.
“I love to write feature stories. I like to go more in depth and do unique projects,” she says.
She started out as a copy editor and then became the Opinion Section editor.
“We have a staff of about 30 people,” she says. “We had at least two opinions in the print issues and five or six online each month.”
Last summer she participated in the Miami Montage Program, a summer journalism program at the University of Miami.
“We created a video magazine and an actual magazine,” she says.
The video she worked on, Feel Safe Florida: Up in Arms, was nominated for Student Production Awards for the Sun Coast Chapter.
This summer she’s attending Girl’s State at Florida State University and then she’s going to
Germany for two weeks for the Transatlantic Global Prep program which focuses on social
justice and international relations.
“I’ve been wanting to study aboard forever,” she says. “There are 10 American students and 10 Germans. And we live in a youth hostel and learn about social justice.”
Wilensky has been nominated for the Posse scholarship program. If she wins one of those
scholarships, she hopes to attend Mt. Holyoke or Davidson College. She’s also considering
the University of Florida and Florida State University to study International Relations with a minor in History.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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