How a Teen Leader Built a Global Scholars Program: The Miles Lima Story – ep.169

At just 16 years old, Miles Lima is breaking barriers in leadership, education, and global opportunity. Blind since childhood and a three-time cancer survivor, Miles is the founder of Manteca Scholars LLC – a student-led program bringing public school students into the prestigious World Scholars Cup, an international academic competition blending debate, collaborative writing, and team challenges. In this episode, he shares how he built a network across continents, launched a high-performing team from his public high school, and leads with purpose and vision. Miles is also a self-employed travel consultant, accomplished musician, and passionate advocate for equity in education and intercultural dialogue.

Tune in for an inspiring story of resilience, innovation, and global impact – led by a young changemaker redefining what’s possible.

Melyssa Barrett: Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Melyssa Barrett. This podcast is for those who are interested in the conversation around equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each week I’ll be interviewing a guest who has something special to share or is actively part of building solutions in the space. Let’s get started. What were you doing in high school? You know how sometimes you meet people and you just are so inspired at how amazing they are at such a young age. This week on the Jali Podcast, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Miles Lima, a high school student from Manteca, California who is already making global impact. His parents are both part of the Divine Nine. His mother, a so of mine from Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated, and his father from Omega sci-Fi Fraternity Incorporated. Miles is the founder and senior director of Manteca Scholars, L-L-C-A-K-A, the World Scholars Program at Sierra High School.

He and a few friends participated in the World Scholars Cup, a global academic competition and intercultural education initiative for the first time back in 20 23, 2 years later, he is a well-established member of the competition’s global community, earning the third highest score in the history of the event during the San Francisco Regional round in April, 2025, all while being one of only few public school students in the United States to participate. He was so inspired by his experiences with the program that in August of 2024, he decided to lead a delegation at his school to facilitate as many teams for the World Scholars as possible. He founded the LLC to reflect this and he alongside his team, worked hard to show the equal capabilities of all students regardless of public or private school education. Outside of academics, miles is a musician playing in five bands and attending a local music academy.

He is a pianist, vocalist and choral music arranger. He is a self-employed travel consultant, a job he has had since the age of 12. He enjoys long and in-depth conversations with his worldwide network of friends and acquaintances and has dedicated his life to the World Scholars Cup intending to join them, join as a traveling staff member upon his graduation from university and by the way, as if he isn’t breaking all types of barriers. With all of that, did I mention that he’s also completely blind man? I feel my father asking me what I have been doing lately. I was not only inspired by my story, but I was so excited to hear about the World Scholars Program, so check it out This week I am excited to bring to the podcast Stage Miles Lima, and I am so excited to have you here on the Jali Podcast Miles and thank you for joining me.

Miles Lima: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Melyssa Barrett: All right, so you have already accomplished so much as a high school student. I mean, you’ve got the Sierra Scholars program and I will give a shout out to the Timberwolves. You are a travel agent, a musician, and I know you’ve even lent your voice to professional sports team. If I recall. Yes. I would love for you to tell me how did your journey as a leader and entrepreneur begin? Where did all this come from?

Miles Lima: Yes, we could start from the very beginning here at around age 10 I would say no, make that 11.

Melyssa Barrett: Okay.

Miles Lima: I was introduced to the world of student leadership by a good friend of mine used to live down in Irvine. She’s now out in New Zealand, but she messaged me one day, this is June of 2020, middle of the pandemic. We’re all at home and we have nothing better to do, and she’s like, I have this idea. What if we go and we do some online Zoom fundraisers and we get people involved that way? We try to raise as much money with all this free time as possible, and so I immediately was like, yeah, let’s do it. I don’t have anything better to do right now. I feel that there’s ambition within me somewhere and now is this good enough a time to find it and discover it and let it grow because well, I’m stuck at home. So we conferred with a friend of ours in England that was also involved in it and computer work and the three of us sat down a couple of meetings and that was sort of the beginning of my journey in planning and my journey in student leadership. That project is of course long gone now, but that was definitely the seed that was planted and from there June of 2021 onward, I’ve just been throwing myself headlong into thing after thing and watering a lot of different seeds in a lot of different areas and that’s definitely what’s gotten me to today.

Melyssa Barrett: I know you’re a musician. I mean, did you teach yourself how to play music or you actually took lessons or how did this

Miles Lima: Happen? That’s a whole different story. So around age three, we were recommended a teacher in this area by the name of Gordon Kennedy. He is the former head of academy at the GK Music and Fine Arts Academy here in Manteca, and we went to him as initially something just for me to do

Fill my time, so he was like, yeah, I’ll work with him. Obviously what you typically do when you start playing piano is sight reading. You’ll start reading this staff and you’ll learn to read the sheet music. Obviously that’s not what I did because at this point my vision was a heck of a lot better than it was now than it is now correction, but it was still not at the point where I could actively read and play, but he said, okay, it doesn’t matter. I will still work with you and I’ll teach you what I can. So that’s where it started. A couple of years after that I started taking voice lessons with another teacher, another instructor at that academy, Olivia Higbee, and that went on for another nine years. I have nine years of initial vocal training and I’m still at that academy 13 years later playing in five of their bands

And working on my own solo projects and whatnot. Two of my bands but out EPS albums over the last few months and I’m working on writing the second album with one of those and I’m very much involved over there. I relatively recently got into choir and choral music because one of my bands had three vocalists and because we were writing original music, I had to learn how to create vocal harmonies and to be able to work with the musicians that I had and I realized that, hey, I have a hankering for this, and I seemed this sort of comes naturally to me and from there I jumped on the choir train and I have not gotten up since because I’m the student director of Sierra I schools choir, do a lot of arrangement for both their choir and a small choir athlete academy, write vocal harmonies for my various bands and I’m very much a choir kid through and through.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow. I know I’ve seen you play keyboard. I’ve had the pleasure of having you at Kwanza and you played and I’ve seen you in other places as well. Were keyboards and the piano, was that the first, that’s like your love for music or

Miles Lima: That is where I started. That is definitely where I started and it’s still a very important part of what I do because there is no, but I would say that everything is sort of interconnected. I am just as much a vocalist as I am a keyboardist and just as much a choir director and arranger as I am a vocalist because everything played into each other. Any good choral musician will tell you that the piano is as important as the individual voice, which is as important as the group voice. So it is definitely where I started, but I would say that all three main aspects of what I’m doing now as a musician are very much connected to each other and I wouldn’t put one above the other.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow, that’s awesome. I mean, when you said you were kind of getting into choir, I didn’t know you were directing in all of that. I mean, talk about leadership, you just kind of like, by the way, as humble as you are, I do all of it, so it’s awesome. I definitely want to get to your Sierra Scholars, but I do want to ask you about, I mean I was kind of surprised I did not realize that you were the voice of Stockton Ports baseball team. What was that experience like?

Miles Lima: That was one of those things where we got a message one day saying, Hey, we have this opportunity. Do you want to come sing the national anthem at this football game or this baseball game correction? We started in football with the high schools and we went to baseball from there and they had heard me through that and through a fellow student of mine at Sierra who had been singing for the ports long before I had anything to do with them. She’s part of Sierra’s choir and I believe she mentioned my name over there and so a couple weeks later we get the message, do you want to do this? And I’m not one to turn down an opportunity, and so they enjoyed it and they’ve had me back every so often from then on.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow, I just love this. I mean, it’s amazing. It is so funny to me because as old as I am, I’m not a spring chicken like I used to be, but to see you as a student networking the way you do is amazing to me in high school. This is just so, so interesting to me how the next generation is so much further ahead of where their parents or grandparents in some cases were with all of the technology and the interconnectedness of on a global scale. It’s really amazing. Oh yeah.

Miles Lima: I fully believe in the motto that networking is a skill, and I’ll touch on that later once we get into more of the scholarship on the scholarly aspect of this conversation, but I do completely subscribe to that philosophy that networking is indeed a skill. Know as many people as you can and keep those people close to you.

Melyssa Barrett: Absolutely. So I know you because I’ve heard your mom tell me that you’re a travel agent. How did that come about? Is that just an extra thing that you decided you wanted to do or what?

Miles Lima: All right. Well, there’s a backstory there too. You are probably aware, but I’m doing a lot in a lot of different places. That’s probably rather apparent from what we’ve talked about so far and what’s going to go up in the bio and such.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes,

Miles Lima: And that’s been a thing for a very, very long time. Since time in Memoria and since I was a toddler, we were going back and forth a bit about my background. I’m a three time eye cancer survivor, hence why I’m blind and a lot of our treatment through the second time with it was in New York City at Memorial Moses Sloan Kettering in New York City. We were out there for a week at a time, just about every month for quite a long while from around age three to say five, give or take, maybe six. And we were obviously having to fly every single month back and forth, back and forth, over and over. Hence began my love of aviation and from there my love of travel overall, we had some contacts over at a private jet chartering and coordination service that was able to get us onto private jets from here to New York and back a lot at that time.

Melyssa Barrett: Nice.

Miles Lima: And so I had the experience as a kindergartner of having flown in economy business and first class on commercial airlines and several occasions flying privately through the first eight or so years of my life even. And so I because of that, developed this fascination with flying and with everything to do with planes and from there the different places that they go and I started to research, I would download all the flight apps on the iPad. I was very much an iPad kid through and through and I would learn all the flight numbers and all the different places that the different airlines went and how to get to where and all of the different things that I could get my hands on as far as aviation data is concerned. Around 10 or 11, I started checking family members into their flights around 11 going on 12.

I started booking because I realized, Hey, I can do this too. And I started to learn. I learned as quickly as I could everything that I could about the different pricing models and how to reduce costs of airfare and hotels and rental cars as much as I could. So come probably toward the end of 2021, I was at a family event and a family friend of ours said, Hey, I hear about what you’re doing. Can you book me and my daughter a trip to all of these different European cities that you listed and can you get it for cheap? And I said, well, I’ll try. And I believe he went San Francisco to Paris and across to London and to Rome and back to San Francisco, and I did it for $830. Everything,

Oh my itinerary and came home, mentioned it to my parents and they were like, Hey, you should monetize that. Four years later I have an established client base, I have professional grade software, I am a full logistical consultant of the mind that the more complicated a request is, the more apt I am to deal with it. So that’s sort of gotten us to where we are as far as that goes. It’s also stoked my interest in what World Scholars does and we’ll obviously touch on that, but everything, like I said, is sort of interconnected when it comes to this.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow, that is amazing. I feel like such a slacker. I’m just like, oh my gosh, I just fly. But you really take it to the next level. So tell me about Sierra Scholars because I had not been as familiar with the Scholars program, and I would love for you to just talk about what it is first and then maybe we can get into your participation.

Miles Lima: What I’m doing with all of

Melyssa Barrett: That. Yeah,

Miles Lima: Okay. Well, first of all, you’re not alone in not being the most familiar with what World Scholars Cup is because unfortunately it’s not the biggest thing here in the United States. We have four rounds in the entire country in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, and New York City, and I’m very lucky to only live about 80 miles away from where my regional round is located is hosted. But what the World Scholars Cup is is a global academic competition and intercultural education and dialogue initiative. It was founded by a Harvard, Stanford and Harvard graduate by the name of Daniel Ky, whom I’m going to talk a lot about later. Keep that name in mind. But he scored the highest in the entire history of the academic decathlon back when he was in high school and while at Harvard realized that a lot of students in other parts of the world did not have anything similar to academic decathlon, and so he decided that this is what he wanted to do was to start a program similar to academic decathlon but different in several key ways that I’ll get into and expand it to the entire globe so that all these different regions that don’t have anything similar or have a different sort of program would be able to come together in this way.

So it was initially founded as just an academic thing. A couple of years later, program is going strong and he realized his, wait a second, all of these people are coming together, these people, these students have different backgrounds from all these different countries. We should capitalize on that too. So it expands even more. Nowadays, 2025 academics, I’d say are probably about 40% of what we do. It’s 50% networking and 10% in jokes and sense of humor, and I’ll touch on those things.

Melyssa Barrett: Nice. You got to have fun.

Miles Lima: Absolutely. Completely and absolutely agree with you there.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow. So the World Scholars Cup, you got involved with the World Scholars Cup first and then all of a sudden you said, Hey, let me start this other new thing and how does this happen?

Miles Lima: How does it all tie together? So I was initially informed about World Scholars by the same girl that had gotten me into student leadership in the first place a few years before even that.

Melyssa Barrett: Okay,

Miles Lima: Her school is facilitating teams for their regional New Zealand and she’s like, miles, I’m doing this super cool thing. And she just mentioned it kind of offhandedly because it’s one of four things she’s involved in at the time, but I thought it sounded somewhat interesting. So I went to their website, checked it out, and I’m like, hold on a second. There’s potential here. This seems like a lot of fun. So I can give you some insight on the structure. We have six areas of study and four areas of competition. The study areas of history, science and technology, social studies, art and media literature, and a miscellaneous category that changes every year.

The four areas of competition, these are definitely what set World Scholars apart from what your average academic competition would look like are as follows. You have a team debate, which I’d say is probably the most standard of all of these four wherein each speaker of your three person team has four minutes to speak alternating between the yes side and the no side of the given motion. That’s fairly standard. There’s no debate format. We have the collaborative writing wherein you’re presented with a list of topics. There are usually six. Again, each member of your three person team will select one of those topics and you can write anything, not necessarily an academic essay that’s five paragraphs. They don’t necessarily like to see that because that’s boring. They want you to have a bit more of a sense of creativity, a bit of a sense of humor. My teammate from last year at the championship for the entire world got a silver medal in writing from a sitcom script. That’s what they want to see from you.

Melyssa Barrett: Oh, wow.

Miles Lima: They want you to think outside of the box for this.

Melyssa Barrett: Yeah, I love it.

Miles Lima: Such is the spirit of what we do. You’re going to see that very clearly as I go through these.

Melyssa Barrett: Yeah, so tell us more for sure. Keep going.

Miles Lima: Yeah. We have the multiple choice tests, which is 120 questions, which scares a lot of people initially, but for each question there’s five answers. Say you’ve got a question, you don’t know if the answer is A or C. You select both if one of those answers is correct because you selected two answers, you’ll get a half a point if you select three answers and one of them is correct, you’ll get a third of a point, so on and so forth. If you don’t know the answer, you select all five and you’ll get a fifth of a point. The scores for your three team members is cumulative and therefore say you don’t necessarily do as well in a section. If you have a teammate that did well in that section, it’ll make up for it. Okay. The test is scary. It is the part that we love to hate on a little bit, but the format is very unique and the format’s a lot of fun at the end, at the end of the day. And then our fourth area of competition is the giant Kahoot is basically what it is. We call it the bull,

But what happens is everybody gathers in the auditorium of whatever school is hosting the round and the staff members of World Scholars are standing on stage with a big old monitor and they’re reading out questions and showing a bunch of videos and basically putting on a big comedy act, and you as the scholar are holding a clicker with five answer buttons on it, and when they read the question and answer, you have 15 seconds to select a corresponding answer with your clicker. If you get it right, then you get the assigned number of points for that question. If you get it wrong, then you get no points and you’re sad. You have, again, all three of your team members participating in this with each other. So there’s a lot of dialogue between the team members and there’s a lot of shouting and screaming out the wrong answers to try to get the other teams to select the wrong buttons and it’s very intense,

Melyssa Barrett: But it

Miles Lima: Sounds like it’s very intense and very loud, not helped by the fact that again, world Scholars is about the sense of humor and having fun. So those staff members are on stage running around or making jokes or otherwise entertaining,

Melyssa Barrett: But set the stage though. How big is this competition? Are we talking about

Miles Lima: Alright, I love my data and I love my numbers. Well, let’s talk numbers. Right now we got about 60 to 70,000 students globally. The United States is not the biggest market for this right now, but that’s primarily because the organization is young. It’s only been around since 2007. Right now our largest country as far as number of students is Kenya with 4,000 students attending one regional round in Kenya and there’s three in the country.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow.

Miles Lima: The country with the most rounds as far as cities with rounds is usually tied between China and India depending on the year. We are on all six inhabited continents so far as of right now with our largest market being as far as number of students in Africa and Asia at a very, very close second and our smallest market so far being South America. And of course what I’m telling you right now is going to be invalid in about a year or two because the organization is growing, as I said, about 18 years old now and it’s just in growing and Sealy quickly.

Melyssa Barrett: How many countries are we talking about that compete at

Miles Lima: 70 right now.

Melyssa Barrett: Okay.

Miles Lima: Although as I said, four rounds here in the US, all major Canadian cities have ’em.

Melyssa Barrett: Okay.

Miles Lima: Vancouver, Calgary and to Toronto, Montreal. To go back to my initial relationship with World Scholars 2023, I joined and I was told about this in March of 2023 and the San Francisco slash Northern California regional round is typically at the end of April, either the second or last, the last weekend of April depending on the year. And so I didn’t necessarily have the most amount of time to prepare for 2023, especially considering I didn’t recruit the third member of our team until around 11 days before the competition.

Oh my. So that was primarily, we were just looking and trying to figure out who would do well, dealing with a lot and I had to go get some routine procedures done in the hospital, nothing major, but definitely consuming a lot of my time there. Just after I recruited our third member, so from 11 days we got down to six and we had six days to prepare and it’s about 350 pages of material that you have to study every year, hence why they usually release it in January. So you have a couple months to go through everything.

And so six days we sat down the three of us and crammed and crammed and crammed and crammed. We didn’t read everything. We got through the main sections, but we didn’t click any of the hyperlinks to read any of the articles. We were just trying to get as much information crammed in our heads as possible. So competition day comes around back in 2023. It was in Campbell, which is just south of San Jose for ware, and we drove down there and we walk in and we look around and it hits us out under prepared. We are, because we are some of the only public school students there and most of those represented are fancy private schools with $78,000 a year tuition well established in San Jose and San Francisco and Marin County. Interesting. We’re like, what in the world are we going to do the answer the best we can? We sat there and we took it as best we could. We did not fa as well as we could have if we had more time, but we fared. Okay,

Melyssa Barrett: How many people are on your team?

Miles Lima: Three people per team. For

Melyssa Barrett: World Scholars,

Miles Lima: You can go in with two, but they do not recommend it. The standard team size is three

And so we take it in stride and we’re not particularly confident. We’re just kind of doing what we can and the awards ceremony comes around, we win a couple medals. We’re like, no, we’re not qualifying. These other students have had resources, they’ve had time. A lot of these schools have World Scholars classes that they take. One of the biggest Northern California schools to do this is basis independent Silicon Valley in San Jose and they usually send about 20 to 30 teams. So they have about 60 to 70 members of their school at the Northern California regional round every year most for the most part. So we were thinking there’s no way that we’re going to qualify. We just barely qualified I think by a five 10 point margin and you need 18,000 points to qualify.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow.

Miles Lima: We just barely made it,

Melyssa Barrett: But you made

Miles Lima: And we did and we were set to go to Australia for the global rounds that year, but we had some team member issues and so we didn’t end up doing it, but that was the feed for World Scholars for me. I realized, hey, this is a lot of fun. This organization has good people and they have a philosophy that I can really get behind and they have my sense of humor to close it out. I can relate and I can really get myself involved in everything that they’re doing.

So 2024 rolls around and we’re at a freshman year for me. I’m a sophomore now of the time of this episode and we do it again. We’re way more prepared. Of course. It’s just one team so far. It’s myself, it’s Colin dw, who’s currently the director general of Sierra Scholars of the Antica Scholars LLC, but he had started it during 2023 with me. He carried over to 2024 on my team and another guy, Douglas, we studied as best we could went in there and at the regional round in 20 20, 24, we won a lot of medals. This team did incredibly well.

Melyssa Barrett: Oh wow.

Miles Lima: Definitely held our own against the private school students. Excellent. A hundred percent qualified for the global round in Stockholm, Sweden, which we did attend. The team scored seventh overall. Wow. Out of all the teams that are in division in Stockholm, again, one of the only public schools up there.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow. Congratulations. That’s awesome.

Miles Lima: Thank you. Thank you. We qualified for the championship November, 2024 in New Haven, Connecticut. We went and I was ranked 17th overall individual out of the thousand odd students in the entire division for the championship.

Melyssa Barrett: Oh my goodness. That’s fantastic.

Miles Lima: Thank you. It was incredible. Absolutely loved that experience. I’ll get into the experiences and why this is such a beautiful program in a bit, but we’ll continue on. The progression between globals and championship between July of 2024 and November of 2024 is when I started to really plant the seed in my mind at my school, August, 2024, we go ahead and found the World Scholars Program at Sierra around August 20th, I believe is the actual founding date of that, and initially we found a lot of success. We had about 40 students sign up, more recruited afterwards by my officers,

Melyssa Barrett: And this is bigger than your school. This is like

Miles Lima: A hundred percent bigger than my school. This program was started to facilitate teams for World Scholars from Sierra High School. So what Manteca Scholars is, is we’re not affiliated officially with World Scholars. We’re our own separate entity and what we do is we facilitate teams from my high school to go participate in World Scholars and that’s the idea that we had back in August of last year and that’s what we had done. So we come back from November all victorious with our medals and we start prep work eventually. Our 48 students whittles down to 33 and we have 11 teams prepared for the regional round in 25, which happens just a couple of weeks ago. We had our study materials released in January of this year for the season. Each season is annual. We had our theme in mind and we had several meetings where I instructed the team captains how to help their team to study. I created supplementary materials for certain parts of the study guide where I felt it was necessary and studied with my own team of course, and we brought 11 teams to the regional round in on April 27th, 28th of this year in San Rafael.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow, awesome.

Miles Lima: We have a pretty small regional round here in northern California. It’s not the biggest by world standards. Like I said, the largest regional round has about 4,000 students out in Nairobi, Kenya. We have maybe 200, maybe 150 students in 2024. This year there were more single handedly because I brought 30 over there, so we had maybe 180 to 200 students at the regional round.

Melyssa Barrett: Nice.

Miles Lima: But even then, the competition we do have is fewer. San Francisco is out of the, we have about 150 regional rounds every year out of 2025 for the World Scholars Program entirely. And San Francisco is known to be one of the toughest because of the caliber of the students that are there because obviously we are in the Silicon Valley region, so a lot of those high powered children of tech entrepreneurs and engineers and stuff go to that particular round. And so if you are a participant in the San Francisco round, your job is actually harder than it would be at another regional round because you have fiercer competition. We’re not the only public school there, but we’re definitely the largest and we are definitely the only ones there under our own sort of direction.

Melyssa Barrett: The

Miles Lima: Other public schools, a lot of those students are on mixed teams with different schools or part of private school delegations and whatnot, various different reasons for being there. We’re the only one there under our own program and under our own direction and I’m happy to say that despite that I have all 11 of my teams qualify for the global round in July.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow, that’s

Melyssa Barrett: Awesome.

Miles Lima: Every single student when qualified.

Melyssa Barrett: Let’s pause for a moment. We’ll be right back. So what’s next then? So how does it work now that you all are all qualified?

Miles Lima: Went ahead and held the meeting the day after we got it back on the 29th and we determined who can go and who can’t for diesel, for passport, whatever. If there’s anyone that has to recuse themselves from actually going now the time to do it, we whittle it down to seven teams, 21 students this second round this year of all of the different options. To give you a brief overview as to how the rounds work, 150 odd regional rounds where you go locally from there, there are about seven to eight different global rounds where you go if you qualify at regionals, you select which regional round, sorry, we select which global rounds you attend and we selected to go to Slovenia, Luana, Slovenia, which is just northeast of Italy, and if you do well enough there, then you qualify for the championship, which is in November, typically on the east coast around the Connecticut, New York area.

Melyssa Barrett: Okay, so going to Slovenia I’m assuming and taking all these 21 people is one of the reasons that you decided that maybe we better raise some funding?

Miles Lima: That is correct. Absolutely. So we start, I have the idea, and this comes from my director of finance and assets, Kahani, who was one of the participants last year on my smaller team, but he is from Fremont and had a lot of experience doing robotics and being involved in a lot of robotics programs over and some of the high powered Fremont high schools and he put me in touch with a few of their team captains and with one of their teacher advisors and they’re like, yeah, you got to do this, you got to do that in order to run a sustainable program. Took a bunch of notes and went ahead and founded an LLC, Manteca Scholars, LLC of which I am the owner and senior director that’s all filed with the state. We are an official LLC as of now and we are waiting. Thank you. We’re waiting for one approval so that I can file with the federal government to get nonprofit status under 5 0 1 C3 so that anyone who donates to us can write it off as a tax deductible.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes. But in the meantime, they can still give now.

Miles Lima: Absolutely can still give now so that LLC is created so that we, because we’re not an official club at Sierra, we’re a little bit different primarily because if we were an official club, we’d have a heck of a lot more paperwork and I’m going to be completely honest with you right now, I have enough paperwork as it is. I don’t want any more. We’re not an official club, hence our LLC and we have therefore the ability to do a lot more than a club would be able to

Including this sort of direct campaigning like what we’re doing right now. I’m sitting here with you having this conversation. I’ve sent briefings to KCRA three and ABC 10 or local TV stations and they have both expressed interest in having us on doing the morning show circuits with us very soon. And this is all made possible by the fact that we are sort of our own program operating within Sierra, and you are correct. All of this was done to facilitate fundraising because 21 students correction is a lot. Obviously sending ’em 5,500 odd miles away from here is a lot

Melyssa Barrett: And

Miles Lima: My estimation as the logistics coordinator for this entire thing is that each team would cost about $7,500 to do that. So $7,500 times seven adjusting up for incidentals, that gets us 66 0 thousand dollars and we would need that as soon as possible. We are looking to get that within, preferably by the end of the month and like I said, that’s why we’re aggressively campaigning and looking to get on the TV and talking to people as much as we are, and that’s in order to get to reach that benchmark in the most efficient and timely way that we can.

Melyssa Barrett: Well, it sounds like you’re on your

Miles Lima: Way. We are. Certainly. What we’re doing right now is definitely a good foundation, but we are ramping up from even here because again, we’re very serious about wanting to do this because this kind of transitioned into the actual program itself. I’ve talked about what it is, but I want to really get into how it is and what makes this such an important part of what I do and who I am as a person. Now World Scholars is probably one of the most beautiful experiences that I’ve had period in my admittedly short life, but it’s very, very moving and very powerful.

Melyssa Barrett: It is pretty short life, so it’s pretty amazing all you’ve done so far.

Miles Lima: Thank you. This program, what they’ve done here, Daniel Chesky and his staff members are probably doing more for diplomacy right now than half of the actual diplomats out there and

Melyssa Barrett: We need a lot of

Miles Lima: Help say that absolutely need as much help as we can get. And I say that they’re doing that is because the environment that they foster cannot be found outside of World Scholars. I don’t believe in my research. The specific atmosphere that’s found within these realms is unlike anything else. It’s really freeing. You can say whatever you want and be yourself and you interact with so many different characters and different people, which yeah, that can be found elsewhere, but what cannot is what the World Scholars staff members themselves add to this

Because they’re a small team, but they all kind of have this personality about them. They are really passionate about these students and really passionate about the work that they do, but in a way that allows them to be very serious about their work but not take themselves quite as seriously. Like I said, the members of this team are spending a lot of time at rounds just joking around with each other and with us and engaging comedically and lightheartedly and that’s a super big contrast. That’s probably the biggest difference I’d say between what we do World Scholars and Academic decathlon, which is where obviously this was born out of, is that lighthearted, don’t take yourself too seriously, have a good time type of atmosphere, which leads to so much more because the students that come in there nervous are not nervous about 10 minutes after getting there. We really find a way to ease people into what we do. There’s singing, there’s a lot of free expression and a lot of just speaking what’s on your mind. It’s very open and very accepting environment,

Which is something I can 120% get behind because at Global Globals are just the reason I do what I do and the championships is the reason I do what I do because I’m sitting there in this assembly hall and I’m surrounded by students from every single corner of the world. I want to talk to somebody from Kenya, I can turn to my left. I want to talk to somebody from Japan. I can turn to my right. I want to talk to somebody from Canada. Look behind me. It’s what we do. And everyone, this is what really struck me is that this World Scholars attitude is pervasive across the entirety of the student body that does it. These super high powered private school students that probably have more money in their bedrooms than I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Some of the nicest, most accepting amazing people that I have met in my entire lifetime.

Melyssa Barrett: In fact, I was just about to ask you, what have you learned about equity and education through this experience?

Miles Lima: That is a huge part of what we do because the entirety of World Scholars, the entire mission is to bring students together. One of the biggest things that World Scholars does is working with students in this capacity and the whole philosophy is basically making us be friends with, become friends with each other before we have an opportunity to make any of these with each other.

Melyssa Barrett: I love it

Miles Lima: Because we have students delegations from, for example, what are some classic enemies on the world stage? For example, Pakistan and India is a big one right now. Yet we have delegations from, we have Pakistan and Indian delegations getting along and getting really close at these events and students from countries that are nowhere new each other. Being able to really learn and get perspective on the ways and the customs and the personalities that can be found around the world. And that I think is definitely one of the most beautiful things about what we do. Back in Stockholm, I met students that I still keep in touch with from Mozambique, from Kenya, from Australia, from India. One of my just best friends right now is up in Vancouver in Canada. That’s fantastic. Absolutely. This is what we do. How old are you Miles? I’m 16.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow, that’s amazing.

Miles Lima: This is what you do. The fact of the matter is that no matter your background and no matter your personality, it’s one of those events that really brings everyone to an equal playing field because we’re all here for the same reason and we all absolutely love World Scholars because World Scholars is its own kind of universe. There’s a lot of in jokes and a lot of things that you come to know strictly as a scholar that really brings us together. There’s a lot of aspects of what we do, a lot of aspects of our program that are unique to world Scholars that we are able to bond over. So we got super rich kids, like Rich as in Steph Curry’s daughter participates in this competition and was at our regional round.

Melyssa Barrett: Wow.

Miles Lima: So that’s the kind of strata, that’s the echelon that this reaches up to.

And yet at the same time, this is the same organization that has rounds in Togo and just the most random parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. We are everywhere. And that is, I think that’s one of the most important aspects of what the World Scholars Cup view on equity is really being able to reach as many people and as many places as possible and bringing them into this so that when you as a participant go to a global ground or go to the championship, you’re able to witness as much as possible, much diversity, meet as many different people as they’re able to facilitate because at the global rounds and at the championship, there’s something called the cultural fair where students from students from their schools will set up tables and display various aspects of their cultures and of their customs and typically it’s food related. I personally love food. I’m a huge foodie.

Melyssa Barrett: Don’t we

Miles Lima: All unashamedly? Absolutely unashamedly. And so just being able to try the foods of 15 different countries in half an hour is already a pretty powerful experience in my opinion because I think food talks.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes, no doubt.

Miles Lima: And then like I said, you have such incredible personalities behind what we do here. Some of these students are just incredible people. Some of the most beautiful people you’re going to ever meet can be found within the halls of world scholarship host schools. And transitioning to another super important point that I think is super key to this conversation, the staff themselves, because World Scholars Club staff members are, they’re a bit of a different breed of their own in the best way possible. These people are different. Okay, let me give you an explanation.

Melyssa Barrett: Tell me how they’re different miles. What’s different about

Miles Lima: The lifestyle is one of the most intense lifestyles that you are going to find across the range of careers in this world because you spend 98.5% of your time as a World Scholars Cup staff member on the road going from country to country to country. I’ll give you an example. Alled is one of the Toronto based staff members, but he was living in Taiwan at the time back in April, 2024. His schedule from when I had spoken to him last weekend of April, 2024, the previous weekend he was in Vancouver. Then he flew back to Taiwan for the week to spend time at home. That weekend he was in San Francisco. Then he flew back to Taiwan to spend time at home and the weekend after that, Kazakhstan for their round, then back to Taiwan for the week and the weekend after Kazakhstan, he was in Romania. And you just do that every single weekend of the year. If you’re one of the guys that goes home,

Melyssa Barrett: Sometimes

Miles Lima: You don’t go home. If there are select staff members that don’t, that just go from point to point to point to point and spend three weeks maximum at home, you’ll go from a lot of your time is spent on random, midnight long haul flights with each other and you’ll be on five to six different continents within the course of a month. And it obviously takes a very unique and very special person to be able to do that and to be able to do it sustainably and continuously.

Melyssa Barrett: But

Miles Lima: What that also absolutely, but what that also leads to is, is that the staff members at World Scholars are some of the most familiar familial people out there because they spend so much time with each other in close confines and getting to know each other on the most deeply personal level. You can really tell that everyone loves each other and just to the deepest extent that is possible. I was speaking with our lead programmer who’s in his late sixties, early seventies, and he’s maintaining that schedule. And you know what? He’s completely content

Melyssa Barrett: Loves it.

Miles Lima: I think if you’re able to do that, if you’re able to do that at that age and you’re able to be completely and absolutely happy with what you’re doing, and I think that really speaks for the kind of environment that World Scholars has

As both the staff member and a participant. And the reason I think they were able to do that is, well, there are several, but I want to talk about the main one, and that is Daniel Zeki. Daniel is the central aspect, the central element to what we do as scholars. He is obviously, he’s the CEO of World Scholars at Cup LLC. He’s also the CEO of Demi Deck, which is the largest producer of academic decathlon study materials here in the United States. But most of his time is spent going from place to place to place hosting World Scholars Cup rounds. He can commonly be found on an airplane going somewhere that’s 5,000 miles away from where he was last.

Melyssa Barrett: Nice.

Miles Lima: Now the personality is the reason that I’m bringing this up because when I tell you there’s probably no one out there more apt to really rally support and to bring people together. I mean that this man is just, he has this way about him. That one puts people at ease. And two, from there really facilitates and fosters this culture, this world scholars culture that I’ve talked about up to this point. He’s a very deep thinker, as I said, Stanford and Harvard graduate, so he’s obviously extremely intelligent, but

Melyssa Barrett: It

Melyssa Barrett: Sounds like he gives something extra in terms of it’s not just the academic excellence, it’s really about, I mean, for you to even be talking about him as the CEO is very different because I will tell you most people that go to different academic, not talking about the CEO and how they made them feel at the events, you know what I mean?

Miles Lima: And I completely absolutely agree with you there because there aren’t very many leaders and CEOs that are Daniel and what he’s able to do. I met him, obviously I had heard of him before Stockholm in July of last year having been a participant and having heard about him from other scholars, but I met him for the first time in July and just immediately first impression was one of the most positive first impressions I’ve had of any person anywhere in a very, very, very long time. He had been familiar with me because I done had sang at the regional rounds prior and one of his staff members had given him a video, so sort of knew who I was and we spoke briefly at that initial meeting, but I had run into him throughout the Stockholm round ever since. And he’s incredibly personable and affable. So we were able to sort of connect. And from there, I am super happy to say that a year and a half later, just one of the most important figures in my operation here, because he’s sort of what convinced me to, well, he was the catalyst that really convinced me, this is sort of what I want to do with my life. This is sort of my life’s calling.

Melyssa Barrett: I

Miles Lima: In Stockholm throughout the week had several interactions with him and his staff and the students. But the closing ceremony, we had spoken briefly about the competition and what it means to so many people, and it just struck me, 1:00 AM Stockholm, Sweden. I’m more in the Airbnb and I’m laying there on the couch trying to get some sleep. And I’ve just thinking about everything that had happened over the last week and about Daniel and his impact and the true positive effect that he has on so many people, and I was emotional. I was this close away from Dick crying. It was a whole life’s epiphany. It was that powerful. I exaggerate not at all.

Melyssa Barrett: And

Miles Lima: I sort of realized in that moment that, hey, if this is how I’m reacting to one event, then perhaps this is what I want to do is join. That’s

Melyssa Barrett: Fantastic.

Miles Lima: Yeah, agreed. It came to the point a few months later in November, 20 minute Champions sort of solidified everything to me, and it made things very clear to me that, hey, this insane lifestyle of going from place to place to place with these people and meeting all of these students under the direction of someone like Daniel, this is what I want. This is what I want to do with my life because this is a full on diplomatic career. So obviously that it comes with the ability to be a diplomat because world scholar staff members are very much diplomats. There’s a lot of government meetings, a lot of that sort of diplomatic aspect of the job without the actually having to work for a government. I get to meet a lot more cool people and I’d be able to go a lot more places if you’re a government, sort of what I wanted to do beforehand was go into the foreign service and going international relations and stuff like that, sort of what I wanted to do before, but that would combine me to one embassy, one cons it, which isn’t exist. I want to be out there. I want go. I want to be on the road. I want to be tired at midnight in a random airport in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and I’m going to be miserable, but I’m going to love it. That’s what I want,

Melyssa Barrett: And I’m going to play this back for you. When you start getting to those places and then you’re like, oh my gosh, I can’t do it anymore. Why did

Miles Lima: I do this to myself? And it’s amazing. But you know what? I think that what really set it in stone for me is the fact that all 20 to 30 staff members or world scholars are able to do this, and yet they all come out here and you can just tell how much they love it every single day. I think that there’s one little phrase on the World Scholars Cup website deep within the bowels of the website to say that the community makes the good times even more joyful, but the bad times bearable.

Melyssa Barrett: Okay,

Miles Lima: I love it. Because of what they’re able to do and because we foster this community, if we want to talk to EI, this is one of the pinnacles of what’s possible for this kind of thing. This community is just the representation of

Melyssa Barrett: Inclusion

Miles Lima: And being able to bring everyone onto an equal playing field no matter what. Obviously, me being completely blind in both eyes and the Daniel Chesky himself outright telling me that I, assuming things continue down the road, they continue down, which I presume they will have a guaranteed home as a staff member for World Scholars and to be accepted as I have been by the community. I don’t necessarily know. If you’ve seen my personal Instagram page, I’ll post you’ve actually, I think you followed me, but I’ll post. Yeah,

Melyssa Barrett: Well tell everybody what your Instagram page is.

Miles Lima: You can still find me over on Instagram at Bad site. Great vision. That’s one word. It’s memorable. You won’t forget it. Go and give me a follow. I do follow everyone back. I have to go and update everything and spend a second since I’ve had a chance to really go through it. But I’m posting up there all the time about my journey as a musician in travel and of course as a world scholar. And the things that have been told to me through that platform alone are apps are nothing short of amazing. I have random students reaching out to me from countries all around the world. Some guy reached out from Albania the other day. I love it. An Albanian scholar, and he’s just like, dude, I’ve heard about what you’ve done because I’ve seen what you post on Instagram and what Daniel’s posted about you, and I just want to say you’re super inspiring and so on and so forth. And this is just the kind of thing that the community there of students is remarkable, absolutely remarkable. Obviously, everyone’s super intelligent. We’re all here for academic reasons.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes.

Miles Lima: But beyond that, I think, as I said, academics are probably about 40% of what we do at World Scholars. The rest is networking. The rest is interaction. The rest is truly learning about each other and the impact that we can have as individuals. And that is one of the most important parts of what this is, and this is the reason that I decided back in July of last year that this is really what I want to do with my life, and 120% have found my calling, and I know that based on their own confirmation that World Scholars is interested in having me on, which makes me more happy than I can even put into words.

Melyssa Barrett: I love the passion that you have. You can tell that you feel like you found what I always call, it’s like, oh, these are my people. You know what I mean? When people have absolutely, you feel like, oh, I can be better because I’m with them, which is awesome. I, and I think that really goes to the inclusion aspect of diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s like everybody wants to have that feeling no matter where they are, because it makes life worth living.

So I love all the things you are doing. I am so excited for you and for what you’ll bring to the rest of the world as you go. So I’m going to ask you this last question because I know I could probably talk to you for another two, three hours. Tell me what advice you would give to maybe another young person who has ideas, but maybe they’re not sure they can make an impact. Because you are just so inspiring with everything you’ve accomplished before the age of 16, and yet you’re like, oh, you’re so humble about it. Creating new companies, instead of just booking a trip, it’s like, oh no, I’m a full-fledged logistical consultant. It’s like I’m amazed by you. It’s like, just take it a couple steps up. So what you say to somebody who maybe another young person who’s trying to figure out what they want to do, I think it’s so critical for you. I mean, at such a young age to already know this is what I want to do.

Miles Lima: Absolutely. If you have an idea, if you have ideas, then capitalize on them. That is obviously a lot easier said than done. But the reason I say it so blatantly like that is because it’s not only just a piece of advice, it’s a mindset. If I have an idea, I must do absolutely everything in my power to achieve it type of mindset here. And that’s the way that I operate. I’m a very goals oriented person. I don’t operate for the here and now when it comes to my own life, per se. I operate for what I’m going to achieve. I have a lot of things. I’m in high school. I’m in a standard high school. I’m not sitting here, and I’m not going to tell you that I enjoy my algebra and English classes. Now, don’t. I’m a standard, a regular old teenager in that regard. I operate for what I know is going to come the Browns of World Scholars joining them, being able to connect with this person or that person or whatnot. These are my goals.

Melyssa Barrett: Set

Miles Lima: These goals and set your goals. Apply them to whatever idea it is that you have and live for those as opposed to whatever limitation you feel you may be facing. And I also want to capitalize on what you have said about finding the right people. I would not be anywhere without, first of all, the one who introduced me into student leadership and the world scholars. If you’re listening to this, Mila, which you might be because going to be sending this to you. Thank you again, as I always tell you, and to my board of directors of man scholars, and I will name them because they’re all public figures here within this program. Nw, my director, general Kashani, my Director of Finance and assets, Charlene Rin, my director of public relations and Adi Gunde, my director of Records and archives, absolutely top of the line students, amazing people.

And I would not be anywhere without them because they make my job so much more enjoyable and so much easier. And that is something that everyone with ideas must keep in mind. That you have to find people that are able to support those ideas, to build upon and to contribute their own, to build something even better. So if the right people are in your corner, you’re already 75% of the way to where you need to be. And if you don’t have the right people in your corner, well you should do everything in your power to try to find them.

Melyssa Barrett: Absolutely.

Miles Lima: Obviously I consider myself a resource, again, I’m over on Instagram at bad site, great vision. If someone has something they are looking to do and they want advice, they want my thoughts on it, just reach out to me. I am here. I am chronically online doing what I do, and so if someone wants to talk to me directly, you can do that as well because I feel like a lot of things are very case by case when it comes to things like this. I can give you your, hey, find the right people, keep the right mindset. But so many people have said that before me. I feel like things like this should be handled on a case by case basis. Alright, so if you as a listener of this show or someone who eventually hears this, this has an idea and you don’t necessarily know what to do with it, reach out.

Melyssa Barrett: That’s awesome.

Miles Lima: I will do what I can or I’ll send you to the right place because I have a global network. I’m so happy to say that now.

Melyssa Barrett: Well, and it’s so awesome that you would even put that out there because you for sure could give some Master’s classes to some organizations that I know of for sure. So last thing I want to make sure people have the opportunity to give to Sierra Scholars. So can you tell them where to go if they would like to do so?

Miles Lima: Absolutely. So right now we are on GoFundMe and the link will be in the description of this episode, I presume.

Melyssa Barrett: Yes, it will,

Miles Lima: But I’ll give it anyway. It’s gofundme.com/f as in fundraiser slash sierra scholars. That’s one word. Again, gofundme.com/f/sierra scholars, if you want to go over there and give to us that way, that would be appreciated.

Melyssa Barrett: Awesome.

Miles Lima: Additionally, if you would like to write us a check, you can make it out to my name, miles Lima, and it’ll be transferred to the organization. We will take any part of the system. So not necessarily just monetary. If you know someone who you think could benefit, who you think would benefit us by knowing of what we do, if you know of someone who can get this program even higher off the ground than it already is, then by all means refer us. Spread the word, tell people, because the more people know about this, the more powerful we are. One of my biggest goals when I become a World Scholars Cup staff member is to grow this program here in the United States and down in South America where we don’t have as many people and we don’t have as many rounds. And one of the key parts of that is getting the word out about World Scholars and about what I’m doing as a part of that. So please spread the word. Even if you can’t give us money, you can definitely give us publicity.

Melyssa Barrett: Absolutely. Well, and there’s probably a lot of companies that would be interested in sponsoring the efforts that you have, so definitely reach out. I think it’s so amazing what you are doing, your board of directors, it’s an amazing story. And the fact that you’re 16 years old is amazing. And then you have all these other things that you’re going through with your eye cancer and I mean, it’s so inspiring. I can’t even tell you how amazing you are. And I’m just so grateful that there are people like you out in the world willing to do the work and connect with people from all over the place because as I truly believe, diversity, equity, and inclusion, people may want to change what it’s called, but at the end of the day, everybody wants to feel included and everybody wants to have a wonderful, wonderful life. So I just thank you and celebrate you for all you’re doing, and I wish you all tremendous, tremendous blessings in going to the next level and to your next competition. So I hope you’ll stay in touch with us. Let us know how you do and maybe you can come back again and tell us how it goes.

Miles Lima: I will be sure to keep you posted. Thank you so, so much for having me. As I said, all of our progress will be posted up on the media pages, that site, great vision, my page and over at Manteca Scholars. And yeah, thank you so much again. This has been an incredible conversation and I appreciate the fact that you appreciate this as much as you do.

Melyssa Barrett: Oh, yes, definitely. Well, we will stay in touch. And again, I thank you so much for joining me for our conversation on the Jali podcast. Thanks for joining me on the Jali Podcast. Please subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. See you next week.