The Zion King

Zion Otaño (’18) was recently honored at Harvard-Westlake’s “Senior Ceremony,” a long-standing tradition described on HW’s website as “the formal recognition of the seniors as the leaders of the school and their acceptance of the responsibility that comes with being the oldest on campus.” It’s a long way from kindergarten, for sure.

Funnily enough, a look at his earliest yearbook page shows that his interests haven’t changed much since 2012 when he described his dream job as “pizza maker” (see photo on sidebar).  Over the past two summers, he has landed jobs as an assistant chef instructor at the Hospitality Training Academy and as a culinary intern at Spago. After working in the real-world food industry, however, Zion has concluded that he no longer wants to make the pizza… he wants to be a restauranteur!

In the meantime, it’s shaping up to be a busy senior year for him. Zion will be serving as a peer counselor, captain of the varsity dive team, and the school’s yearbook editor-in-chief. We advise him to be precise with the yearbook job — one never knows when or where those pages might show up again!