About Quade
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. It is also one of the least interesting things about me, because reading that much was never the goal. My interest was finding and replicating the activity capable of unlocking incredible potential, ideas and imagination based on how my brain works.
I am neurodivergent. As a child, I struggled to communicate all of my ideas clearly. Handwriting was a visible problem, transitions were challenging. 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. I was Co-Champion of the 2020 Penguin Random House Who Was? History Bee and an International Scholastic Kids Press Reporter from 2022-23. Early relationships with top book publishers in the world provided fuel for reading and opportunities to meet and interview authors and editors. Their stories and encouragement were foundational.
At the same time, my daily conditioning and structured movement breaks became healthy habits. Athletics and team sport from an early age, provided a regular channel for me to navigate a very active mind and build relationships. Combined with my intuitive reasoning and elite level cognitive functioning, I became a highly-decorated multi- sport athlete. I am a 5 time USA Water Polo Olympic Development Program athlete and 2025 Cadet national champion. Most importantly, I have spent enough hours in a pool, on the field and in the student-athlete community to recognize patterns of behavior that emerge when a team is struggling or when individuals are battling internal struggles and afraid to come forward. My internal navigation system pointed towards adaptable, integrated and scalable FREE solutions.
Reading Athlete was created from my intersection of passions, service work, academic ideas. My goal is to help the 35 million student-athletes in the USA to maintain health balance and reach their potential as leaders of community in and beyond sport.
We are at a critical time in history with long-form reading (decline) and mental health crisis (rise) heading in opposing directions. Whether an inverse relationship or negative correlation- the free program I created aims to measure and reverse the trends, alternatively building a healthy student-athlete culture. I am dedicated to navigating towards a future where discipline, literacy and sport training can translate to leadership in any field.
I am increasingly curious about what happens to cultures where people stop long-form reading and I hope to continue my studies with international research. This Spring, I wrote an essay about book banning, algorithmic curation and the kind of censorship that limits free exchange of diverse perspectives. It was shortlisted for the John Locke Institute Global Essay Prize out of 100,227 entries from 183 countries. I am hopeful that the message will be shared to elevate this important and historically relevant message: as young citizens we must protect and celebrate diverse stories and counteract digital information bias if we want to maintain principals of democracy. That means advocating now for access to free and varied information to maintain a space for open dialogue and healthy communities.
I currently sit on the Children's Book Committee at Bank Street Center for Children's Literature, where I am the youngest member in the committee's century -old history, and I founded and chair its Youth Choice Award. I have served three years on the 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, (but I would love to speak with anyone who has.) 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 to build reading athletes. It is a pillar of stewardship and foundational to innovation for a better future.
Most importantly, I am trying to make sure that the kid who needs a story or has one to tell- can find the right door or window in a book , and that nobody has taken it off the shelf before they get there.
-Quade
- July 2026
Photo Credit: GOLS