Joining Niles West’s student body during her junior year, senior Cherie Animashaun has made a huge impact on the community during the little time she’s been at West. Animashaun has numerous leadership positions in and out of school and makes sure to welcome everyone to become involved as she is.

Animashaun began a non-profit organization in her junior year of high school known as “Her Rising”. The initiative of the organization was to build up and give confidence to young girls. Within this organization, Animashaun holds events and charities that all go towards helping youth girls in and out of the country.

“I started it [Her Rising] last year. It was kind of on the small scale, I was taking funding from my publishing company and using that to do different things. I would go to middle schools in Evanston and bring them cards, give speeches, and do some pep talks. From then, we grew it out and by December 2021 we had partnered up with one of Nigeria’s biggest orphanages and we started to donate money there. We were also able to get food delivered there and a bunch of other supplies,” Animashaun said.

Before creating “Her Rising”, Animashaun had previously been part of many other organizations. “It ended up being the result of me being part of so many organizations that I just wanted to make my own. Being a girl myself and all the insecurities and drama we face, I wanted to do something that was more targeted towards that. I wanted to help girls who are insecure or girls who don’t have many opportunities or even girls who had big dreams but didn’t know where to start,” Animashaun said. 

Her Rising consists of many subdivisions and events, but Animashaun wants the organization to show girls how to be confident and successful. “Her Rising is pretty much a lot of stuff but I like to just say that it helps girls in youth rise above. Whether it’s rising above with mental health, rising above in academics, rising above in your career, or rising above in any way shape, or form. This year we were able to award a scholarship and that has to be one of my proudest moments in helping someone rise above,” Animashaun said. 

One of the events that Animashaun held recently as part of a Her Rising initiative was Girls Who Lead. This event allowed girls from all over Illinois to participate for no cost. “When I was little one of my dreams was to be a chef, but I had no idea how to do that. I didn’t know about all the different kinds of things you had to do. I created Girls Who Lead and I found women from all different kinds of fields to attend and speak to the girls who came. This year we had two hundred girls total. We had workshops for all different interests like engineering, computer science, culinary, writing, fashion, and pretty much anything you could think of. We’re hoping to continue this every year,” Aminashaun said. 

Many influential women joined Animashaun in speaking at the event. “We had leaders like U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth, who did a virtual presentation, and we had a top chef Debbie Gold come in and teach culinary classes,” Aminashaun said. Animashaun also focused on making sure that there was a diverse group of leaders as it was one of Her Rising’s initiatives, which was making sure that all girls get some type of representation.

Within the school community, Animashaun is currently a part of the CSSI (Curriculum Standards for School Improvement) in which she works with the district and administration to discuss and present new ideas for classes. Recently, Animashaun helped with passing the new course that will be available next year called, “Stories of the African Diaspora”.“It’s going to be analyzing things that have happened in history, more Black joy, more African joy, not just focusing on issues but allowing for many students to feel heard,” Animashaun said. It will be an English elective open to all grades.

Along with that, Animashaun is also the current president of the Black Student Union. Being president of BSU and running a not-for-profit as well as a publishing company is only a short list of what Animashaun is involved in. With that said, Animashaun was recently recognized as a semifinalist for the Coca-Cola scholar’s scholarship. Animashaun was also awarded the Taco Bell Scholarship and the Global Leadership Scholarship.  

The Taco Bell Scholarship was a national scholarship where your application had to do with your passions. Grades were not a part of it. You touch upon how you pursue your passions and how you’re using them to change the world. I talked about my passion for helping children. Especially kids who don’t believe in themselves, kids who don’t have resources, and kids who don’t have opportunities,” Animashaun said. 

Apart from the essay, the Taco Bell Scholarship also required a video to be made further showing student passions. “In my video, I showed clips of me helping girls and boys. I also included clips of me helping girls with Her Rising and the published books written by kids that I’ve helped with publishing,” Aminashaun said.

Animashaun was awarded a 25,000 dollar scholarship as a result of this.  

The other scholarship that Animashaun received was awarded 5,000 dollars.“The second scholarship I’ve received is the Global Leadership scholarship. That one included talking about what you do around the world. Whether it be community service that’s in and out of the country and then you write a couple of essays on that. I wrote about Her Rising because we help women in Iran and Nigeria. I also talked about my editing and publishing company because we publish authors from all over the world and we help get their voices out,” Animashaun said. 

As for being the president of BSU, Animashaun has found joy in this leadership position. “With BSU it’s super cool because you get a mix of students. The biggest thing I tried to do with BSU this year that we didn’t have last year is to have a consistent home. I want it to be like a family for all of the students because we go through so much at home and school. I just want members to be able to walk into BSU and find people who are putting in the effort to help them out. For example, this year we took a trip together to go see Black Panther. I knew that seeing this movie together would be such a big moment seeing that Black representation and all the other cultures represented as well,” Animashaun said. 

Animashaun decided to also have a separate college night dedicated to helping members of BSU. “I know that usually the Niles West college night is great and beautiful but there’s definitely a lack of diversity. It’s usually the same race giving these presentations and there’s usually not enough support for students who don’t know much about the college process as well as others do. So we had our own night. I contacted some friends and I was able to have a pre-med student from Harvard, we had students from Howard university the HBCU, and we had people from UIUC, overall a mix of college students where they all discussed the application process. Mr. Randolph came in to help and we had Black counselors come in as well. It was really nice because you don’t usually see that at college nights,” Animashaun said. 

Many of the BSU members have enjoyed the change in the club and are excited about all the new activities and events that have been planned. “In the past years BSU has been shaky with leadership and we were even questioning if BSU was going to continue this year if we weren’t able to find a good leader for the club. Cheri stepped up for the role. She appointed many other seniors leadership positions and made sure to appoint a junior as a vice president to keep the club going,” senior Ashley Kyobe said.

Apart from establishing a solid foundation for BSU, Animashaun focused on making BSU an active club. “Cherie helped make BSU fun, we started having arts days and we even got to see Black Panther together. Not only activities but also college days. A whole meeting would just be focused on doing college application-related things. We would watch videos from BSU alumni and get information about college experiences whether it’s a PWI or an HBCU. She really tries to keep the community moving especially with the recent hateful remarks that have happened at school, Cherie has opened up affinity spaces which have really brought people together to talk about these issues whether it’s agreeing or disagreeing. She’s been a big help to building up BSU to what it is now and helping push us all to succeed,” senior Kyobe said.  

Not only are students inspired by Aminashaun, but teachers and staff are as well. “Cherie is a change-maker and is a remarkable leader both in and out of the classroom. She has such a strong work ethic and is exceptionally compassionate,” teacher Dena Lichterman said.  Animashaun’s accomplishments have become known to many in the school community. “I became familiar with Cherie last year when I heard about a student who self-published a self-help book for teens. Then, this winter, I came across Cherie’s name again when she posted an invitation to a girls’ empowerment workshop she was offering in our community. Her Rising Girls Initiative workshop, Girls Who Lead, was completely underwritten through grants and sponsorships that Cherie secured. She has now held two day-long workshops, one of which my own daughter attended and loved. It is remarkable that she is able to balance a rigorous class load while also running a not-for-profit and being an active leader in many clubs! Cherie is the kind of student that leaves an indelible mark on every teacher she meets.”

Leaving a big impact on many of the students at West, Animashaun has many people who look up to her. “Cherie is truly an inspiration for so many students at Niles West, given that she only started West during her junior year. She would always inspire me to go for new things and push me to take on new challenges and she does that for so many other people as well,” Kyobe said. 

 Animashaun has many more plans for the rest of the year with all the activities she is involved in. She currently is scheduled to give a TedTalk for sometime in March devoted to inspiring others. It’s currently unknown where the location will be for the TedX event. 

“My slogan for my speech is something along the lines of, ‘Turn your pain into fuel and use your fuel as power’. I want everyone to feel amazing about themselves at the end of the speech,” Animashaun said.