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Miami Palmetto High School senior Sofia Arnau is Palmetto’s Silver Knight nominee for Drama. While drama is important to her, so is the environment. In fact, she created her own non-profit called TerraServe in August of 2023, which was her major community service project on the application.
“It’s an environmental organization that serves to educate or inform students about different careers in sustainability,” she says. “I’ve been involved in other environmental groups since middle school. I still work with Turtle Team as their consulting director. And I’ve been with the Miami Youth Climate summit for seven years.”
In fact, she was president last year. She plans to step back to let other people take over after the election although she’ll still be involved.
She’s also involved in the Junior Philanthropist Foundation as the Florida high school state lead. She also serves as an FXB Climate Advocate. It’s an international group that she says does more than just climate work. She attended their climate cohort in Fall, 2023.
She was a guest speaker at the Volo Foundation Climate Corrections Conference last March.
She was on a panel with one other high school student, presenting to 250 people who had master’s degrees.
“It was extremely intimidating but extremely fun,” she says.
Arnau is the vice president for the Green Initiative in the Science National Honor Society at Palmetto and the Environmental Chair for Student Council.
She became fascinated by climate change issues while in sixth grade at Palmetto Middle.
Her teacher recommended she participate in beach clean-ups and suggested Arnau join the Miami Youth Climate Summit.
“I fell in love with what they were doing,” she says. “It was really inspiring.”
She found sustainability consultants and learned about career paths that she didn’t think were possible before talking to them. Arnau wants to be a sustainability consultant in her career.
Arnau says there are many fields that can produce careers sustainability, including urban planning, construction, and business.
TerraServe puts out information on Instagram and Tik Tok. They are hosting an Eco Fair for Earth Day at Palmetto. And they plan to host more workshops, both virtually and in person.
She plans to double major in Environmental Sustainability Studies and Business Management. Her college application list includes the University of Florida, Florida International University, SUNY ESF, the University of North Carolina and Florida State University.
At Palmetto, she’s heavily involved in theater. She’s been in drama all four years of high school. She specializes in stage management and lighting for all productions.
She’s competed at thespian competitions in make up design, costume design, set design and stage management.
“I’ve gotten Superiors for all my pieces and two Top Honors in costume design and set design,” she says. “At states, I got a Superior for costume design.”
This year she received a Top Honor for set design and will go to states after the holidays.
She is the Miami-Dade County School System Sustainability Office intern.
“We held our Green Schools Recognition Awards recently,” she says. “We had 75 schools apply. We judged them according to a rubric. We helped host and plan the event.”
The Student Council Environmental Committee partners with other committees for initiatives.
“We started a native plant garden that we handed off to the Science National Honor Society,” she says.
The committee had a palm oil candy initiative for Halloween, making sure the candies given out did not contain palm oil.
In addition to her theater work at school, Arnau plays varsity badminton doubles for the GMAC champions Palmetto team.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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