What is a Reedie? Zesean Ali ’20 !!

It’s become an annual feature of the Reed Magazine, What Is a Reedie? A dozen graduating seniors from all sectors of the College are profiled. If you asked, “Are they typical students? Do they really represent the graduating class?”, I would have to reply, “You don’t understand Reed College! There is nothing typical about any of our students. Of course these dozen represent the graduating class!”

This year’s dozen includes Chemistry major, Zesean Ali ’20. To sit and talk with Zesean for a few minutes is to watch the future unfold before your very eyes. He is energy personified, and you can count on him to be looking around the next corner. So I wasn’t surprised to hear him tell me a couple of summers back, just before he returned to his fall semester classes, that his summer research project had convinced him that his future lay in public policy, not scientific research. Nor was I surprised to watch that plan morph into his leadership of our student American Chemical Society chapter, and another deep dive into organic chemistry research (natural product chemistry of mushrooms), and now, yet another direction. He’s headed to the Harvard Divinity School. Zesean, like any “typical” Reedie, simply defies easy labels.

Congratulations, Zesean. And best of luck. Your future is very bright!

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