My name is Quade. I am a 17-year-old rising senior from San Diego, California, and I have read more than a thousand books. That is the fact people react to, in a time when my peer group has seeming replaced long-form reading with digital material and is now struggling with a measurable rise in reported mental health crisis. It is also the least interesting thing about me, because reading that much was never the goal. It was what happened when I found the one activity unlocked incredible potential based on how my brain works.
I am neurodivergent and was diagnosed with "Type 1" functioning Autism, in the gifted or savant quadrant. I also have Sensory Processing Disorder with a seeking profile, so athletics and movement provides a regular channel for me to navigate a very active mind.
As a child, I struggled with an education system that describing my challenges without empowering my gifts. Handwriting was a visible problem, transitions were the invisible one. Books were the place where none of that was a disadvantage. I could read at a level far beyond my age and see connections through story. By age 12 I had read over 400 biographies and saw a roadmap to academic inquiry.
As a child, my daily conditioning and structured movement breaks became habits. Combined with my intuitive reasoning and elite level cognitive functioning, I became a highly-decorated multi sport athlete. I am a USA Water Polo Olympic Development Program athlete and a national champion, and I have spent enough hours in a pool to know what a team sounds like when something is wrong and nobody will say it.
In 2025 I was the only student-athlete in the USA to have earned The Congressional Award, Gold Medal, USA Water Polo Olympic Development National Championship Gold Medal (Cadet), Junior Olympics 16u Gold Medal (Classic). During that time I maintained a 4.0 GPA in the most challenging curriculum available with concurrent collegiate-level coursework and a part-time job at the YMCA. The honors measure impact, but the most important work I have done it the mental health interventions with my peers that have saved lives.
Reading Athlete was created from my intersection of ideas and desire to help the 35 million student-athletes in the USA at a time when long-form reading and mental health crisis are headed in opposing directions. Whether a inverse relationship or negative correlation- the free program aims to measure and reverse the trends to build a healthy student-athlete culture for a future where the discipline and benefit of sport can translate to leadership in any field.
I am increasingly concerned with what happens to cultures where people stop reading, and to countries that decide for them. I recently wrote an essay about that, about book banning and algorithmic curation and the kind of censorship that does not need to burn anything. It was shortlisted for the John Locke Institute Global Essay Prize out of 100,227 entries from 183 countries.
I sit on the Children's Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education, where I am the youngest member in the committee's century -old history, and I founded and chair its Youth Choice Award. I serve on School Library Journal's Heavy Medal Mock Newbery Committee and received the California "Champion of the Community" award of excellence, an award typically reserved for community members with decades of service and lasting impact to their cities. What drives all of it is the same thing: curiosity, a love of reading and sport, and a sense of responsibility to build places where people feel seen, understood, and less alone.
I am not trying to make anyone read a thousand books. While I am always excited to talk about and recommend books, I now go beyond curating reading lists and instead test and measure ways to build the best conditions that build life learners.
I am trying to make sure that the kid who needs one can find it, and that nobody has taken it off the shelf before he gets there.
- July 2026
Photo Credit: GOLS