Ashton Visconti hurries through a crowd of people, clutching her clipboard and desperately searching for a pen despite having one tucked behind her ear. Her organization – a group dedicated to helping LGBT* students – was holding a Thanksgiving bake sale and turkey raffle, and President Visconti was at the head of it all.

 

Every few seconds another person would run up to her and ask her a question. Visconti would look down and flip through the pages on her clipboard before answering their question within seconds as if she had been given an answer sheet. I later found out that all the pages on the clipboard were nothing more than the syllabus for one of her classes on top of several blank pieces of paper.

 

“The clipboard makes it clear that I’m the person that’s organizing everything,” Visconti said about the pages. “Since they’re supposed to be for things that a person can’t remember off the top of their head, and I’ve known everything for this event for a couple weeks already, I figured the policies for my science class would be close enough.”

 

It is this kind of preparedness and hard work that has made it possible for Visconti to be successful as all the tasks she has started to take on in her life.

 

Throughout high school, Visconti had worked more towards doing better for others and helping to make the world a better place for everybody than she did for her school work. Focusing more on volunteer work than school work caused her to fall behind and have difficulty in many of the classes she had taken.

 

Now a straight-A psychology major at SUNY Broome, president of three clubs – two of which she had founded – and an active member of several charities throughout the year, Visconti has shown that getting bad grades in high school doesn’t mean you are going to do badly in life.

 

By achieving these difficult achievements, Visconti proves that she is no stranger to hard work. Watching her calmly through stressful situations further proves that she has an innate talent for making it all look easy.

 

From a young age, Visconti can recall always being willing to help people. Whether it was eating with the kids sitting alone at lunch, or doing fundraising with her clubs and teams, Visconti has always been eager to help others before she helps herself.

 

While in middle and high school, Visconti had been a member of her school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) and Key Club, as well as being a cheerleader and playing on her school’s volleyball team. She also spent a fair amount of her free time volunteering with various charities around her hometown of Chenango Valley, working at animal shelters and the local Boys and Girls Club.

 

“She was always busy with volunteer work and helping other people when she was in school,” Jenna Watson, a long-time friend of Visconti, said. “I would say she was one of the most popular girls at her school because she was always willing to be friends with pretty much anybody and she participated in so many clubs and activities that she just got close with everyone.”

 

Even though Visconti has donated her time and money to multiple clubs and organizations throughout her life, she attributes her greatest achievement to the two new clubs she created once she graduated high school and started attending college. The clubs – one being a women’s advocacy group, the other an LGBT* rights group – had been slow to start, but once people started to hear about their existence, they took off.

 

“I’m really happy that she created these groups,” said Shelby Jones, a member of both of Visconti’s groups. “She was able to help me both make some pretty good friends here and do some good for the world at the same time.”

 

After talking to several other people in the groups that she works with, I discovered many other people had stories about Visconti like Jones’s. People that were happy to go out and have fun all while making a difference and making friends.

 

Although Visconti enjoys spending her free time helping to try and make the world a better place, her favorite thing to do is to spend time at home with her parents and her dog.

 

“I love seeing her go out and try to save the world every day,” her mother, Desera Johnson, said. “But what I love more is seeing her come home, toss the clipboard down, and watch 90 Day Fiancé with me.”