Avery Cohen ’26 and Ayaan Rege ’26 will serve as the SGA president for the 2025-2026 school year following an uncontested election. The pair sat down for an interview with The Hill News so that the community can get to know the pair who will be representing the student body this upcoming school year.

 What are your goals as SGA Presidents next year?

Ayann Rege ’26: We have a lot of areas that we want to see improved, but I think our main goal is to spread the love for Hill. That’s our motto. Avery and I, we love Hill a lot. Hill is our lives and everything we do in love is at Hill. We want to make an experience where others can also have this and they can feel comfortable representing themselves in this community and always feel included and have a genuine passion and spirit for everything at Hill. So, I think definitely increasing the school spirit and increasing the compassion within the school to create the community that Avery and I love so much.

Avery Cohen ’26: I want to add that we want to increase engagement within the community. We want people to be excited to be here. We want to just collaborate with all sorts of students. We want to connect the upper forms to the under forms. Also, within the SGA, we want to be a little bit more productive. It’s our goal to lead from the top down.

The foundation of our community is built on student leaders, and I think that starts with us as co-presidents. So, if we can start being more productive in the SGA and really outlining some tangible goals, then we want to work within the SGA first and get the 3rd form and the 4th form representatives more involved.

And we want to increase collaboration within the SGA, but then as a school as a whole, we just want people to get excited to go to school here. We want people to be engaged. And from that pillar of engagement and connection, we will work towards more tangible goals.

What lessons have you learned from your experience as senators that you’ll bring into next year as presidents?

Cohen: After two years of experience serving as SGA senators, we learned how we work together and how to get things done productively and how our leadership styles complement each other and how we can use that to get things done.

In our experience, we have definitely learned how the SGA works and the process to pass proposals and how to send emails and how to communicate. We learn how to lead in the SGA from our co-president, so we are going to take that experience and the lessons we have learned and the roadblocks we’ve encountered, things that we can’t get done, the proposals that don’t get passed. We are then able to use that and turn that into motivation to keep going or just find different ways to get stuff done.

So, I think being in the SGA for the past few years has really taught us a lot and will help us lead the SGA to become a more productive and important part of everyone’s life, not just the senators and the people who are a part of the SGA.

It’s hard to come into the position of co-president without actually having that experience.

You don’t know how it works. You didn’t have that experience as a form representative and I think every year we have gotten a better understanding of how the SGA works internally and also from Maggie and Hilton’s leadership, Reet and Mason’s leadership. We know how to run meetings, we know what we need to do to get things done, so I think that is going to be super valuable.

Do you foresee any differences in your roles as a senator compared to as co-presidents?

Rege: I think our experience as senators definitely will make this a smooth transition, and I’m very optimistic about that.

I think it will be very interesting and cool to see how we can create initiatives that will help the school and like Avery said, we have the skills to create these proposals. Now it’s just a matter of making them more accessible and more widespread so that the effects can be felt by many more people.

I think the biggest jump is going from 100 students to 500 students.

Cohen: I think that we are ready for that jump, and this is something we have been working on since 3rd form year when we found out the spring of our 3rd form year when we won the election to be 4th form senators. I think we had some goals, and we accomplished those goals. But the bigger picture was we want to be co-presidents of this school one day and we’re going to work really hard so that the transition from representative senator to co-president will be as smooth as possible.

I think the biggest difference is we are the representatives of this school, younger students look up to us, when other students think of student leaders and leadership, we want to be those people that these aspiring leaders look up to. We are really excited to be that figure for students in the school to look up to and lead.

I truly think that the engagement and feeling and the culture of the school really starts from the 6th former, starts from the co-presidents. We are really excited to be those people and we’re going to lead by example. We’re going to be engaged, show our excitement, enthusiasm, and our love for Hill. And hopefully that will kind of send a ripple effect to younger students and be that co-president, that leader that we looked up to and wanted to become.

What advice would you give to your previous self or anyone wishing to run for the SGA?

Cohen: I would say just do it. Just run. I did not run my 3rd form year because I didn’t feel like I knew the school well enough. I didn’t know the people in my form; I didn’t know how this place worked well enough to be a leader and be someone that people could look up to and rely on.

Honestly, I regretted not running my 3rd form year and I think: just do it. It’s going to be really rewarding. While it might seem scary or intimidating, the reward you will get in turn is much greater than being nervous to write a speech. I would just say do it and don’t have any regrets because it is a lot of fun and worth trying because you won’t know that maybe one day you can be the future co-president of the school.

Rege: Definitely don’t hold yourself back. I remember even sophomore year when I actually did decide to run, I was really skeptical and nervous about the idea of running and having a debate in front of the entirety of my form and peers. But at the end of the day, I realized it was an opportunity that I really wanted to do, and when I was fortunate enough to get elected, I couldn’t have seen myself in any other way.

This is such a big part of my identity, and it could be such a big part of yours too, if you’re a younger student. So definitely don’t let anything hold you back. If you want to do it, just do it like Avery said, you never know what could happen.

Cohen: If you told me my first year at school, that I would be a really important student leader at the school. I probably wouldn’t believe you, but just work hard and open yourself up to these opportunities because it might just become one of the best opportunities.

Any concluding words?

Cohen: We are really excited and looking forward to this opportunity. We are definitely going to make the most of it.

We are already working hard in preparation for next year and looking forward to an exciting year. We are going to keep going now and then once we transition into the position of co-president, I think we’re going to start strong and finish strong.

We want to be those leaders, that sixth form class that younger students look up to and want to become.