Nathan Fair interviews three members of the USA Debate Team. Nathan shares information on the World Schools Debate.
00:00- Introduction
00:26- Genevieve Cox
06:47- Kaitlyn Maher
10:20- Ria Raj
Genevieve Cox is a returning member of the USA Debate Team as well as the President of her team at Ray. This is her 7th year competing in Congressional Debate and Extemporaneous Speaking. In Congressional Debate as a Freshman she placed 8th at Blue Key, 2nd at UT and broke to Semi-Finals at the TOC. As a Sophomore she finaled at Yale and Emory, placed 6th at Blue Key as well as the NCFL Grand Nationals and the Senate at the NSDA Nationals. As a Junior she championed the Glenbrooks and Harvard tournament, was the runner up for the TOC, and placed second at the TFA State Tournament. She has 30 lifetime TOC bids. She has also been playing piano since she was 2 years old, having performed in Carnegie Hall 6 times. In her spare time she enjoys drinking boba and watching detective documentaries. She feels incredibly honored for this opportunity to represent her country on the USA Debate Team.
Kaitlyn Maher has competed in debate her entire high school career, primarily in Congressional Debate and World Schools. She captains her school’s speech and debate team. In Congressional Debate, Kaitlyn placed 3rd at the 2020 Tournament of Champions and has made numerous semifinal and final rounds at Harvard, Yale, Emory, Princeton, Durham, Bronx, NSDA Nationals in the Senate, and more. Kaitlyn competed on behalf of the USA Debate Development Team for two years, during which she won first place and top speaker at the Delores Taylor Arthur Invitational, championed the Bluebonnet Invitational, and finaled at the Blake Tournament. In her junior summer, Kaitlyn was awarded a U.S. State Department National Security Fellowship to study Mandarin in China. She also sings and acts professionally. Since becoming the Youngest Top 10 Finalist on America’s Got Talent at age four, Kaitlyn has performed for presidents, toured internationally, and starred in numerous feature films, TV shows, and national commercials. She serves as an Artist Ambassador for Compassion International, an organization which aims to combat global child poverty. In her free time, she enjoys traveling with family, volunteering at her church, dabbling in other languages (currently Arabic), writing music, having spontaneous dance parties, and scouting out restaurants that serve escargot. Kaitlyn feels tremendously grateful and excited to compete with Team USA this year!
Ria Raj has been involved in speech and debate since her sophomore year, participating in International Extemporaneous Speech and World Schools Debate. In Extemp, she was a quarterfinalist at George Mason University, finalist at Bethel Park and earned a bid to the Tournament of Champions. In 2020, Ria was a four-time local tournament champion earning the highest number of bids in Cleveland for International Extemp. In Ohio, she was a state quarterfinalist and alternate to nationals her novice year and a state semifinalist in 2020. Ria earned a position on Cleveland’s World Schools Debate team, winning international runner-up at the 2020 NSDA National Tournament. Outside of speech and debate, Ria serves as her school’s Diversity Fellows co-chair, senior class secretary, and on the Model United Nations leadership board. She focuses her time most heavily on social justice reform, as content-editor of the Laurel Political Review, Asian culture society president and co-founder of her school’s March for Our Lives chapter. Additionally, Ria conducted a three-year research project on political awareness levels in high schoolers and independently wrote a current event curriculum. Ria has volunteered her time teaching English at Us Together, a refugee resettlement agency and tutoring students in reading at Citizens Leadership Academy, an inner-city school for lower-income families. In her free time, she loves dancing, listening to music, playing instruments, reading the news and traveling with her family. Ria is excited for an amazing year with USA Debate!
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