President Committee

Adam is an experienced debater who has been participating at a competitive level for over 7 years, now he is a student at Harvard studying Economics. He has won many speaker and team awards at international tournaments such as Harvard, Princeton, Georgetown, and the Tournament of Champions. Adam first heard about debate at a seminar and decided to pursue it further. From debate, he has learned to think more critically, to write more effectively, to speak more convincingly, and to pay more attention to the world around him. In his free time, Adam likes reading, playing the piano, and going out with friends. Adam first came up with the idea of Youth Debate League when he offered to teach a debate class free of charge for 15 students but received over 40 sign ups in less than 4 days. The number of people that signed up in the short amount of time despite the limit helped him realize the need for free, accessible debate education and inspired him to create an organization of like-minded people that work to make the art of debate an opportunity available to everyone.

Nishesh Jain is a final year law student at King's College London. Ali joined YDL on Feb 20, 2022 in its early stages and is now the vice president. He is a student at Semiahmoo Secondary IBDP who is a proficient programmer with seven years of experience in various programming languages including Java, C#, and Dart. His passion for programming has led him to successfully publish a mobile application after dedicating over two years to its creation. Apart from coding, Ali’s interests range from mathematics, business, video editing, the Persian language, to playing the guitar and soccer. Ali is thrilled to join the YDL team and eagerly anticipates working with everyone. He is the creator of the YDL Student Management Automation System, the YDL website, and several other YDL project and ideas.

Brooke is studying Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, where he is researching parasite microbiology and immunology. Brooke joined YDL on Oct 3, 2022. A student at Collingwood School’s Morven Campus, Brooke has dedicated over two years to debate. Since his beginnings at the start of the 2020 year, he has gone on to win awards at local, provincial, and global tournaments in a variety of styles, including BC provincials, SFU, and Harvard. Debate has truly helped him grow as an open-minded individual and learner, as well as provided valuable skills in critical thinking and persuasion. When he isn’t giving a speech at his school’s debate club or researching for the next debate topic you can find him reading, playing video games with his friends, hiking, or best of all, taking an undeserved nap.