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The Walker School celebrated its Class of 2025, honoring a group of accomplished seniors as they received their diplomas and prepared to take their next steps beyond the Marietta campus.
Valedictorian William Darko, who has attended Walker since Pre-K and will enroll at the University of Toronto in the fall, encouraged his classmates to look beyond the surface of everyday life. “We should push ourselves to find novelty and significance in the mundane,” he said. “We can choose to sleepwalk through our daily activities or to wake up, even for a brief moment, to observe what we often miss.”
Sofia Tejedor, the class Salutatorian and a future Brown University student, reflected on the small and meaningful moments that defined her time at Walker. “There’s not one person in this room who isn’t the best at something, who doesn’t carry a little magic in them,” she said. “Each of us has our own gifts. All of us have accomplished so much. May your journey continue to be as unique as you are, and may you keep looking for the little bits of magic in your life.”
The keynote speaker was Lauren Hands, a 2007 Walker graduate, University of Michigan graduate and the founder of Hands Motion Pictures, a film production company based in Detroit. Her career has taken her to film festivals around the world and into classrooms across her hometown through her nonprofit, the Hands Foundation, which supports thousands of students and educators each year in Detroit.
Hands shared a candid story about the early part of her career, when she followed a path she thought others expected of her — going to law school and clerking for a federal judge — before realizing it wasn’t the right fit. “I wasn’t happy, and honestly, I wasn’t very good at it,” she said with a smile. “So I made a change. I finally found work that matched my heart.”
That change eventually led her to community development work in Detroit and, ultimately, to a career that combines creativity, leadership and impact. She credited Walker for giving her the foundation to pivot and pursue work that felt meaningful.
“Walker was and still is very much my foundation. It’s where I learned that I could be both smart and creative. That I could be thoughtful and bold. That success wasn’t about fitting into someone else’s idea of achievement but figuring out what flights you up and embracing that. Even more than that, Walker has given me a sense of home. It’s a safety net,” she said.
In her closing advice to the Class of 2025, Hands said: “Stay true to you. The world will meet you there. I promise. Surround yourself with people who tell you the truth and love you through the truth. Don’t chase perfection. Chase progress. And when you do fall, which you will, fall forward. Make sure you’re constantly getting better. The world needs people like you. They need creative people. They need intelligent people. They need kind people, grounded people. They need Walker people.”
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