Coming into her freshman year, current junior Lori Steffel says her expectations centered around grades. Soon, she realized a new world of extracurriculars at GBS, spurring new goals for her high school career. Steffel believes that she is currently on the right track for accomplishing much of her goals. In fact, she says she excels by giving her all and helping others through a variety of activities.

Steffel is involved in junior varsity lacrosse, Key Club, marching band, Model United Nations (MUN), P.E. Leader Program, Peer Mentoring, Student Council and Titan Learning Center.

Among all these clubs, Steffel was recently recognized for her dedication to MUN at the New York MUN conference (NHSMUN), alongside her partner junior Audrey Brown. According to MUN sponsor Terry Jozwik, Steffel and Brown represented the Republic of Korea in their committee and were asked to speak in the United Nations headquarters in New York due to their excellent work.

“They were asked to be the presenters at the closing ceremony, […] and when [they] walked up to me to tell me, they were just exuberant and excited to be speaking at the UN,” Jozwik said.

Steffel is a board member on the GBS MUN team and is an active participant in all the conferences she attends. Jozwik believes Steffel was a strong leader at NHSMUN.

“Every time I walked in the room, Lori was either speaking or […] was always in the center of about 10 or 12 other people, speaking to them,” Jozwik said. “[At one point], she [was] surrounded by 11 guys, and she’s sitting down at a table, writing the resolution. And they’re all looking at her, making contributions at it, but you can clearly tell that Lori Steffel’s in charge of that group.”

Brown describes her reliability and cooperation with Steffel during the conference that led to their achievement of being awarded Best Delegation, which is the top award.

“I can go do something else [in the committee], and I know that she can handle whatever the other situation [that] was going on,” Brown said. “So, if I walked away for a minute, I knew that she would be 100 percent okay with managing the group, or managing a crisis situation if I managed the group. So it was just a really good tag-team effort.”

This strong friendship between the award-winning MUN partners began in a Key Club event in their freshman year.

“We have been friends since freshman year, and it was a Key Club field trip for grandparents day,” Brown described. “ I wasn’t sure if I was going to go, and Lori was super passionate about Key Club […]. She introduced herself to me, and she was like, ‘Hey, you should come with us.’ […] And we became instant friends.”

Steffel explains her ever-present passion towards Key Club since freshman year and how this has led her to be a leader of Key Club.

“When I was in eighth grade, I went to the incoming freshman night, […] and I saw Key Club,” Steffel said. “And in middle school too, I just really enjoyed volunteering. So, the idea of a volunteering club attracted me.”

Steffel recalls when she first applied for a leadership role as a freshman, and explains her hard work to get to the place that she currently stands at, which is on the board of Key Club.

“For every leadership role I applied for, it always scares me,” Steffel said. “The first leadership role I applied for was Key Club. I was terrified. I was in a room with [Josh Koo, Key Club sponsor], and he was just asking me questions. […] I worked hard throughout the year in order to get to the place where I was being looked at to be a leader in Key Club, and I would say that that goes for anything.”

According to Koo, Steffel truly showed off her dedication and leadership skills when she single-handedly organized a Key Club trip to Feed My Starving Children.

“She organized a time, got enough support, organized transportation, lunch, everything,” Koo said. “All I did as the sponsor was give the okay.”

According to band director Aaron Wojcik, Steffel also contributes in the marching band both musically and socially. He noted that Steffel works hard to help the band and the band members.

“[In marching band], she’s not only there putting in long hours, but she’s always out there actively trying to help out other people, especially the freshmen,” Wojcik said. “She makes it easier for people because she’s very nice about it, very pleasant about it.”

Steffel says she still takes honors classes and makes sure to prioritize academics despite her extracurricular involvements at South.

“If I can really get everything done for school, then I can really focus on all of my clubs, but sometimes I do have to pay less attention to [extracurriculars] in order to keep my grades up,” Steffel said.

However, Jozwik tells a story that shows Steffel’s full commitment in all of her activities despite her hectic schedule, both academically and extracurricularly.

“Her day started out [one] morning at 8 o’clock with [MUN] […] until 2 ,” Jozwik explained. “Then she went back to school to perform in the band. Then she did Key Club Random Acts of Kindness for another five hours. I mean, that’s like 18 hours of incredible work that would normally take three people to do. And yet, Lori was one person who did it.”

Wojcik agrees with Jozwik that Steffel’s time management and her ability to balance out the different activities is incredible.

“I know for a fact that she’s fully committed,” Wojcik said. “And I’ve seen that in her abilities to resolve conflicts. In addition to all the school stuff that she’s in, in addition to band, she’s also doing a sport. […] And I know that I can always trust her to make the right choice based upon not only what’s good for her, but what’s good for the team, or the band, or whatever else is going on.”

Just as Steffel impacted GBS through her many activities, she says that each club benefited her in a different way.

“In Key Club, we just help each other and help people in the community,” Steffel said. “In [MUN] we just went to New York and we all became like a family. So, the [overall benefit] that I’m seeing is that we’re helping each other, and we’re helping other people.”

With having a little more than a year left of her high school career, Steffel speaks of the improvements and goals she would like to achieve by the end of her senior year.

“Hopefully, [I] get into college,” Steffel said. “I’d like to keep my grades up, if not improve. Honestly, I hope to become less stressed out and have less on my plate so that I can just really put all of my energy in the few […] clubs that I’m doing and in the stuff that [is] just really important to me and really make an impact in those clubs.”

Not only do Steffel’s friends, such as Brown, hope to work with Steffel again next year, but club sponsors also wish to see the leadership skills and impacts that Steffel will further make.

“The fact that she is doing that level of involvement with our school and student government at this point really is kind of like a testament of where she’s going to be by the time she’s a senior,” Wojcik said.