Inside the Minds of Tomorrow’s Business Leaders: Round 1 Results of Comment & Win 2025

At Wharton Global Youth, we treasure our busy summers, delivering online, on-campus and location-based business and finance education programs to thousands of high school students around the world.

Our Comment and Win Competition – now in its eighth year – is a unique extension of that summer student connection. While we don’t get to meet most of you in person, in June, July and August, we are reading what’s on your hearts and minds, discovering your varied interests, stepping inside your experiences, and marveling at your emerging business knowledge. It’s truly something.

During Round 1 of our 2025 Comment and Win Competition, which ran from June 16 to July 4, 205 commenters left nearly 430 comments on 100 different Wharton Global Youth business-education articles. And while you flooded our pages on July 4 with a total of 113 comments, there was a much more consistent flow of comments during the three weeks, compared with previous years. Your business curiosity was steady and strong.

We appreciated your digital DNA in every comment and emerged from our evaluations with a better understanding of your motivations – and a whole lot of other worldly trends and issues. Some memorable moments from Round 1: Nalin A.’s near Halloween debut as a Chipotle order, with chip bags; Shreyas S.’s argument of guilt as a success motivator; Sarah Y.’s Ms. Honey in Matilda moment; Maushmi M.’s great point about plushies and coasters; Eric C.’s grandpa’s roadside noodle stall in Taiwan; Michael M’s opinions on a cashless society (we love when you find your way to evergreen content!); Isabella P.’s deep Colombian connections; Jiaheng Y.’s clever Spotify list; Anvitha B.’s Svanika-inspired poetry; Aarush S.’s family performance-fee model; Fangyuan’s “vivid strokes” about Auld Lang Syne; Sanjana’s indigo and turmeric-dyed sarees and kurtis; Henry H.’s diehard defense of his pink drink; Alan M.’s keen observations on China’s Hukou system; and Austin L.’s shoutout to Shiloh Dynasty.

We learned about Mukbangs, Yonex badminton equipment, Pazar farmer’s markets in Bulgaria, Mills Conflict Theory, Dude Perfect’s trickshot videos, and “The Assassin” short-seller, Fahmi Quadir.

And, of course, we learned about all of you, from your entrepreneurial startups (we didn’t miss NeuroED, Suriya D.!), to your Gen Z zeitgeist. This poignant quote from Inzhu in Kazakhstan: “What I wish the world could understand is that young people are under constant pressure to be perfect – to get top grades, to make the right choices, to always stay strong. But we’re still figuring out who we are. This pressure doesn’t build character – it often builds anxiety and self-doubt. When mental health is ignored in this process, we risk losing not only motivation but the joy of growing up.”

This year’s Round 1 seemed somehow more reflective and robust, with especially strong repeat commenters spreading thoughtful insights across articles. We see you, Tanisha I. and Hrithik! You are clearly seeking to add value and make meaningful connections to the content and the people helping to bring these stories to life.

So, that brings us to our winners. This year, we are scaling way back on our top commenters and doing away with superlative shoutouts. We urge all of you to embrace the John Green mindset of creating for the love of it and not for the accolades.

Commenter Sydney puts it like this: “You need to create something to inspire, you need to create something that you can be proud of, and most importantly, you need to find meaning in the actual process of creating. For example, let’s say you are writing a comment like this one. Why are you writing it? What are you learning from this process? Well for me, I’m writing this comment because I feel as though the amount of inspiration and real-life advice that stems from Green and his writing needs to be brought to attention. Also, from this process, I’m learning that the best way to get your voice heard, is to go out and get your voice heard.”

And with that, here are the three Round 1 winners of Comment and Win 2025:

First Top Commenter and Comment: Congratulations to Yijia C., 16 and a student at Nanjing Foreign Language School in China. Yijia left sharp and provocative comments on five different stories – all reflecting the finesse of her talents as a tennis champ and influencer. However, since we must choose one winning comment for each round, we are going with Yijia’s conversational and informative response to Alana Andrews, a guest on the Future of the Business World podcast episode, Launching a Healthy Sports Drink By Gen Z for Gen Z. Yijia stays close to the content, weaving in her own experiences and research and expressing it all with a spot-on commenting tone. And we were also excited to discover (after the fact) that Yijia visited us on Wharton’s Philadelphia campus this summer for Moneyball Academy (check out this comment to understand her love for tennis and data.)

Second Top Commenter and Comment: Congratulations to Alyssa D., 17 and a student at Ridgewood High School in New Jersey, U.S. Alyssa dropped her insightful winning comment on the article, The Power of Word Choice in Influencer Marketing. We love a comment that uses the content to drill deeper – in this case, about the power of authenticity and even word choice among social media influencers. Alyssa clearly and succinctly draws her own strong conclusions about the role of influencers and how we are perhaps led astray by inauthenticity, rather than captivated by what is real. “Especially in a digital age, everyone is constantly chasing perfection. We idealize the lifestyles we see online, and we forget to care that they might be curated and unrealistic.”

Third Top Commenter and Comment: Congratulations to Eric C., 16 and a student at John L. Miller Great Neck North High School in New York, U.S., for his thoughtful comment on How Will You Use Technology to Shape Our Future? Eric’s ideas are simple and well-expressed – hardly in essay form, but instead in the spirit of a true comment that reacts and shares a personal perspective. The article inspired him to think about AI and tech development in an entirely new way – and with his interest in data science and policy, we are hopeful that he will use this new insight to create change: “What we build reflects what we believe, whether we admit it or not.”

That’s a wrap on Round 1! Our winners will receive e-books from Wharton School Press. Round 2 responsive comments are due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern on July 25. We hope you all have been enjoying this experience – our editorial team at Wharton Global Youth certainly has! We promise we are reading all your comments and gleaning the highlights with the zeal of business enthusiasts and educators.

We’ll leave you with a quote dropped in Round 1 by Nalin A. on an article that was among the most popular with commenters exactly one year ago: “I think that’s something I’ve wrestled with a lot as a student interested in business. There’s pressure to think globally and build fast, but sometimes businesses can be more meaningful if they stay close to the people and places that shape them.” Your comments suggest that our future business leaders are learning and growing. Good luck in Round 2!