Charlotte Post Top Senior pours into building community

PATRICE JOHNSON | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Palisades High School senior Jade Mungai, The Post's Top Senior of the Year runner-up, will enroll at UNC Chapel Hill in the fall.

Jade Mungai is determined to help others.

The Post’s 2026 Top Senior of the Year runner-up, Mungai plans on studying neuroscience and political science in college with a concentration in international and foreign affairs. 

“I’ve been accepted to UNC Chapel Hill, University of Rochester and Northeastern University to name a few,” said Mungai, a senior at Palisades High School who picked UNC. “Academics, obviously, are very important. Which college is going to give me the best opportunities academically and research wise is important.

“But, at the same time, I also look at how the feel of the school is and the community – how student life will help me, especially with different clubs and things like that. Chapel Hill has one that would help me with my international relations, and they also have a neuroscience honor society. So, it is really important that the university has extracurriculars that will help prepare me for my future.”

Mungai is a member of Health Occupations Students of America due to her interest in medicine. Her experiences in HOSA have affirmed her passion. 

“After competing and going to different health science colleges and everything, that has purely helped me focus more on my medicine career in the future,” Mungai said, “and it has helped me narrow down what I wanted to do.”

Mungai said she always wanted to study medicine at some level but attending a medical conference in Massachusetts confirmed her aspirations. Mungai’s father Peter and mother Evageline are from Kenya and Ghana respectively. After seeing health disparities in other countries gave Jade a passion for international relations and foreign affairs. 

“I've always wanted to be able to do surgery,” she said. “By having a background with parents from different countries and everything, international relations also came into the fact when I was looking, when I would go to the different countries, and I would look saying, ‘Oh my gosh, this person can’t afford surgery, or this person can’t get equal access to what they need to do.’ And so, I want to be able to use not only my neuroscience and everything, because with neuroscience, when you go into surgery, you also learn a lot about other different surgical pathways as well. I want to use that as a way of helping other countries. … My overall goal is also working with the World Health Organization.”

Mungai credits several people who have helped shape who she is. 

“One of the people that made a great impact on me, especially in my high school career is my English teacher Mrs. Rebecca Collins,” she said. “Ever since freshman year, she has been one of the few teachers that I’ve had that has always encouraged me to do better because she knows that I can.

“She would always push me harder, and she is one of the biggest role models at school. Then another person that has impacted me is probably my grandma. She has always been there for me throughout my entire life, always encouraging me.”

With the future ahead of her, Mungai said there is one thing she would tell her younger self.

“It's not about what people tell you that you should do,” she said. “It's what you should do for your own love and passion for it. I’ve had people tell me, ‘Oh, you need to do this, oh, you should do this and everything.’ I tried it, I never had a love for it. But when I finally realized I had a love and passion for medicine and foreign affairs, that has always been in my mind ever since.”

In 15 years, Mungai hopes to be leaving a lasting impact on the world. 

“I'll be working on patients and everything and having a connection with patients, but at the same time, still constantly doing research about different and cognitive disabilities,” she said, “but at the same time, working with either the state or federal government or international government at that time to help improve the health care system in different places.”

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