Donny Granger, Creation Studios

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At 16, Emily Aver isn’t afraid to stand by her convictions. After refusing to take the required armed forces enlistment test at White Station High School, she was encouraged to explore her thoughts on nonviolence at BRIDGES’ Leadership Institute. “We talked about Martin Luther King’s six principles of nonviolence. I learned you don’t have to do everything to an extreme; sometimes doing it nicely gets you farther.” She and other Leadership Institute alums are now working together to equalize the conditions and resources in the city and county schools. And Emily isn’t afraid to think big. She hopes to one day go to Leiden University in the Netherlands to study international law, then move to The Hague, the international city of peace, and go work for the U.N. “But I’m still young. I have to finish high school first!”

“I’ve always stood up for what I believed in.”