Abhinav Chellury is a senior at Plano West Senior High School and competes in congressional debate, extemp, and world schools debate. His accomplishments include 4th at Yale, 7th at the TOC, 4th at UT, and finals at tournaments like Harvard. He’s a 3 time qualifier to TFA state in congress and extemp, and even placed 3rd at the UPenn World Schools invitational.

​Ananshi Patel is a rising junior at Plano West Senior High School who specializes in Public Forum Debate. She has competed in speech and debate for four years and was a Public Forum Debate Captain at Jasper High School in her sophomore year. She has qualified for the TFA State Tournament both years of her high school career (2021 and 2022), reaching the doubles round in her sophomore year. Additionally, she has received a silver bid for the Tournament of Champions, championed several local tournaments, and reached numerous out-rounds in Tournament of Champion qualifying tournaments.

Anuj is a rising sophomore at Jasper High School and has been competing in debate for the past three years. In Public Forum, he has qualified for the TFA state tournament, the TOC, and the NSDA National Tournament. He has found success at numerous national level tournaments, including placing 10th speaker at the Tournament of Champions, 1st at the Seattle University Invitational, 1st at the Colleyville Invitational, and quarterfinals at the Hockaday Tournament.

Arrman is a rising sophomore at Jasper High School and has been primarily competing in Public Forum Debate for the past two years. He has qualified to TFA State and NSDA Nationals, as well as the Gold TOC where he placed amongst the top 20 speakers. He has won national level tournaments including 1st at the Seattle University Invitational and 1st at the Colleyville Invitational. He has also made it to elimination rounds at national level tournaments such as Harvard, the Peninsula Invitational, and Hockaday.

Brady Zeng is a senior at Plano West. Ranked 1st in the nation in PF in 2021-22, he accumulated 12 TOC bids, the most in history as a junior. He placed 4th at NSDA Nationals, championed Arizona State, Bellaire, Holy Cross, seeded 1st at Harvard, Harvard Round Robin, New York City Invitational, and top spoke Glenbrooks, Holy Cross, Colleyville. He's privately coached students to 2nd at Middle School TOC and the most TOC bids for freshmen in the nation.

Brennan is a rising senior at Plano West Senior High School and has been competing in speech and debate for five years. Throughout his time competing, Brennan has finished 11th at the NSDA Nationals, qualified and broke at the Tournament of Champions in Extemporaneous Speaking & Public Forum Debate. In addition, he has reached out rounds of major national level tournaments such as Harvard, Yale, the Martin Luther King Jr. Invitational and the Texas Forensic Association State tournament.

Brian Zhou is a senior at Plano West Senior High School and primarily competes in Public Forum Debate. He has qualified to the Gold TOC, NSDA Nationals, as well as TFA State, placing 11th at Nationals and advancing to elimination rounds twice at TFA State. Additionally, he's advanced to elimination rounds at other major tournaments such as Harvard, Yale, and UT, and has reached finals at numerous locals as well.

Danielle Wang is a senior at Plano West Senior High who competes in public speaking and oral interpretation. She’s been a member of Speech for the past 4 years. In her sophomore year, she was a co-captain for the oral interpretation program at Jasper High School. Danielle has competed and placed in numerous tournaments throughout the years including major tournaments such as the Yale University Tournament and many local tournaments.

Emily Hu is a junior at Greenhill School and competes in World Schools Debate. She placed 3rd in TFA State and has reached many eliminations rounds at national tournaments, including octofinals at NSDA nationals.

Eric Qian is a freshman at Jasper High School. He has been involved in speech and debate for two years, and he mainly competes in Public Forum Debate and Extemporaneous Speaking. In his two years of speech and debate, Eric has reached many elimination rounds and placed numerous times at local middle school tournaments.

Evelyn Ding is a sophomore and debate captain at Jasper High School and competes in Congressional Debate and Extemporaneous Speaking. She has placed top three multiple times at local tournaments, and she qualified to the TFA State tournament, where she advanced to the quarterfinal round. She is a 2022 NSDA National tournament qualifier.

Gabriel Bo is the current Executive Director of Expansion. He is also a champion at both the state and national level for Extemporaneous Speaking. He has won tournaments such as the National Individual Events Tournament of Champion. He is the current runner up at the University of Emory Tournament, a Finalist at the National Speech and Debate Tournament, and a multiple Texas State finalist. Gabriel loves teaching public speaking, foreign policy, and current events to younger students inspired to learn!

Govind Pattathil is a senior at Hebron High School who competes in extemporaneous speaking. Throughout his past 3 years in debate, he has broke to numerous out rounds at state and national tournaments including finals at Penn, semifinals at NIETOC, and quarterfinals at TOC, ETOC, and Harvard.

Julia Duan is a senior at Plano West Senior High School who primarily competes in Congressional Debate and International Extemp. She has qualified multiple times to NSDA Nationals, TOC, and TFA State. She placed 1st at the Lone Star District Tournament, and has finaled national tournaments like Sunvite, UT, and Online Nationals. She has also made Semifinals at Yale, TOC, UC Berkeley, and more.

Justin Zhu is a senior at Plano West Senior High School. He competes primarily in Congressional Debate and Extemp and has reached elimination rounds at several state and national level tournaments, including 2nd at the National Speech and Debate Tournament, 7th at UT, and finals at TFA State. He has also competed in World Schools Debate, placing in the top 16 teams in the country.

Kaaviya is a junior at Plano West Senior High School that competes in Extemporaneous Speaking and Congressional Debate. Along with qualifying for NSDA Nationals, she broke to semifinals at UT and TFA State (in Extemp and Congress), and quarterfinaled at TOC, ETOC, and Harvard.

Kate Lee is a junior at Plano West Senior high school, where she competes in extemporaneous speaking and congressional debate. She has qualified for TFA State, TOC, and NSDA Nationals, where she has broken to elimination rounds at each respective tournament.

Krish Shah is a senior at Hebron High School where he is the President of their debate club. He primarily competes in Extemporaneous Speaking and World Schools Debate. In Extemp, he has placed 6th at UT's Longhorn Classic, broken to semis for 2 years in a row at TFA State, and qualified to UKTOC, ETOC, NIETOC, and NSDA Nationals. In World Schools Debate, he has competed on Team Texas, being a part of the winning Team Texas team at Isidore-Newman.

Madeline Tsao is a senior & team captain at Plano West and competes primarily in Extemporaneous Speaking and World Schools Debate. She placed 3rd at the UT Longhorns Classes, 7th at TFA State, and quarterfinaled at Nats in Extemp. In Worlds, she is 1 of 11 students who represents Team Texas at national & international tournaments, such as Harvard WSI 2022, where her team broke 1st seed out of 127 teams.

Patrick is a rising senior at Plano West Senior High School and has been competing primarily in Congressional Debate and Extemporaneous Speaking for 6 years. He has qualified to the TFA State Tournament thrice and the Tournament of Champions twice, and has placed 9th at the UT Longhorn Classic and reached outrounds at major national tournaments like Glenbrooks and Florida Blue Key.

Phoena is a senior at Plano West and primarily competes in Extemp, Congress, and World Schools Debate. Most notably, Phoena is the reigning TFA State Champion in Foreign Extemp, where she was also Top Speaker and Runner-Up in Congress. Phoena also placed 2nd and 3rd at UT in both types of Extemp, 3rd at the UPenn World Schools Tournament, 6th at the ETOC, and 8th at Harvard.

Pranav Kalakuntla is a junior at TAMS and primarily competes in International Extemporaneous Speaking. He has competed in many local and national tournaments, quarterfinaling at the 2022 TFA state tournament.

Sanjana Kumar is a junior of Plano West Senior High School and has competed in Public Forum for over two years. She qualified to Silver TOC, NSDA Nationals, and TFA State (x2). In her sophomore season, she broke to elimination rounds in the majority of the tournaments she attended, including championing several local tournaments and reaching the doubles round at the state tournament. Sanjana is very excited to be teaching at the Be the Light Workshops again this year!

Satvik Mahendra is a rising senior at Plano West Senior High and primarily competes in Public Forum Debate. He and his partner Brady qualified to the TFA State Tournament, TOC, and NSDA Nationals multiple times. This year, they led the nation in bids to the Tournament of Champions and were consistently ranked #1 in the nation. They were also undefeated in prelims at UT, Harvard, Harvard Round Robin, and the New York City Invitational, reached semifinals at Blue Key, and won Bellaire, Arizona State University, and Holy Cross. Recently, they placed 4th at NSDA Nationals. Satvik is excited to return back to BTL!

Sophia Wei is a sophomore at Jasper High School and competes primarily in Extemporaneous Speaking. As a former BTL student, she has competed in speech and debate for 4 years and currently serves as the Extemp captain for the Jasper Speech and Debate team. This past year, she placed in numerous local tournaments, qualifying for TFA State, NIETOC, and UK TOC.

Sophia Zhang is a senior at TAMS who has been competing for the past 5 years, and primarily competes in public speaking events. She mainly focuses on speech events such as dramatic interpretation, oratory, and humorous interpretation. She also served as an interp captain for the Jasper speech and debate team. She has also placed consistently at tournaments, and plans on continually competing throughout high school.

Srjana Srivatsa is a rising senior at Plano West High School and competes in Congressional Debate and Original Oratory. Along with making semifinals at the Tournament of Champions and the NSDA National Tournament, she has also placed 5th at the TFA State Tournament, 7th at the Barkley Forum for High Schools, and has broken to outrounds at multiple state and national tournaments.

Zoya Makkar is a senior at Plano East and primarily competes in Original Oratory and Dramatic Interp. She has made it to outrounds at national tournaments like Harvard, TOC, Yale, the Longhorn classic and NSDA nationals. She is also a 3 time TFA qualifier and 2 time Nationals qualifier.