MARI KOYANAGI

Mari Koyanagi is a 17 old secondary school student based in Japan. She has a variety of interests, ranging from political science, economics and physics to music, language and performance arts, and she aspires to become an architect as her career path. She is a member of Systems Change Summit, a global youth-led conference series, and prefers to go to bed early every night to maximize her productivity. 

Growing up, Mari used to be very shy, and was not good at talking with someone. Through her music club activities, she had experiences creating winning performances at music band contests, such as We are Sneaker Ages Contest, where she led a team of 10, including singers, drummers, guitarists and keyboard players. As a result, her team won first prize in its regional contest and could proceed to the final stage, which is a national contest. Despite not ending up as a finalist, she learned how important it is to make efforts and to exchange opinions. From this contest, she experienced personal growth and is no longer hesitant to communicate with others.

Currently in high school, Mari is spreading her intellectual curiosity across a wider range of subjects, including but not limited to Modern Japanese, Classic Japanese, Political Science and Economics, Ethics, Mathematics, English, Physics, Sciences and Geography. With respect to her extracurricular activities, she is a team leader of her school’s music band club, takes vocal and musical lessons at professional music schools, and is learning the guitar. Furthermore, she is a leader of two music bands, and is learning English, Korean and Mandarin Chinese. 

In the future, she aims to continue her musical journey through singing and playing the guitar, on top of dancing and acting. Taking her triple threat ability from the performing arts center to her community, she also aspires to become an architect and bring fresh ideas and design into older houses, making them as exciting as her band performances. Her reasons for wanting to become an architect is that she believes architecture is an instrument for change, she is confident that this industry can positively impact other people’s lives and she finds the incredible variety of options within the profession to be suitable for lifelong learning and development.