"I Hope to Honor My Family, My School, and My Home" — Radford's Cameron Werkman Is the First in His Family to Leave the Country
One of 42 public high school students selected for the 2026 Hawaiʻi Sister-State Study Tours.
Student Snapshot
Name: Cameron Werkman
Preferred Name: Cameron
School: Radford High School
Grade: 11th
Home Community: Salt Lake/Moanalua, Honolulu (near Radford HS/military community)
Delegation: Okinawa
Travel Dates: March 14–25/26, 2026
Focus Interests / Extracurriculars: Model United Nations club; Legacy Club (environmental community service); Junior Class Vice President; first Radford student to participate in the AP Capstone mentor program across Hawaiʻi; strong background in history, communication, and leadership
Career Aspirations: Political representative, informed democratic participant, or scholarly leader — he articulates this directly and with unusual specificity for a junior
Why They Were Selected
Cameron is a military child who chose Hawaiʻi — not because he had to stay, but because something about the islands answered a question he'd been carrying his whole life about where home actually is. His essay is thoughtful and politically literate in a way that stands out in this cohort: he writes about travel destroying prejudice, about serving as a democratic participant, about what it means to be the first in his family to leave the country. He's not going to Okinawa to check a box. He's going because he believes it will make him a better citizen.
What They're Excited About
Traveling outside the United States for the first time ever — as the first in his family to do so; representing Radford, Hawaiʻi, and his country; the personal growth he anticipates from being somewhere genuinely new
He's Lived in Georgia, Florida, Virginia, and Hawaiʻi. He's Never Left the Country. That Changes This March.
For most of his life, Cameron Werkman didn't have a straight answer when people asked where he was from. Military families don't always get to pick a home — you're everywhere and nowhere at the same time, as he puts it. Then his family got deployment orders to Hawaiʻi, and he stepped off a plane onto an island that felt, somehow, like a foreign world. He fell in love with it anyway. Now a junior at Radford High School, he's about to leave the country for the first time — and he's going as a representative of the place he finally calls home.
Cameron is the Junior Class Vice President at Radford, a Model United Nations member, an environmental volunteer with the Legacy Club, and the first Radford student ever to participate in the AP Capstone mentor program across Hawaiʻi. He's a student of history who thinks carefully about what it means to participate in a democracy, and he has already named what he wants to be: an informed citizen, a political representative, or a scholarly leader — someone who embodies what Hawaiʻi actually stands for.
Cameron was selected because his reasons for wanting to go are unusually clear-eyed. He doesn't talk about the trip as a résumé line. He talks about travel destroying prejudice. He talks about coming home more tolerant, more collaborative, more ready to lead. And he carries something specific into this experience that most students don't: he will be the first person in his family to ever leave the United States, and he knows exactly what that means.
"I feel that by being the first one in my family to leave the country is an opportunity that I hope will honor my family, my school, and my home." — Cameron Werkman, Radford High School, Class of 2027
When Cameron returns to Salt Lake from Okinawa, he'll bring back more than photographs. He'll bring back a perspective that his Model UN club, his classmates, and his community haven't had access to yet — the kind that only comes from being somewhere genuinely new. For a school that serves Hawaiʻi's military families, many of whom travel constantly but rarely internationally, that matters.
