Described by his RE peers in 2021 as “the go-to man on campus,” Medina has long been known for doing it all, and doing it well. A few bullet points in a vertigo-inducing resume: A polyglot and grandchild of Cuban immigrants, Medina speaks Spanish, French, Mandarin and English. During his time at Ransom Everglades, he was frequently recognized with academic awards and other achievements to the surprise of none of his peers, who saw him as an intelligent, humble and generous classmate. At Princeton, Medina spent four years as a chemistry major and generous community member, dedicating his time to teaching science to university peers and younger students in various settings. His thesis research in organic chemistry proposed a novel way to upcycle difficult-to-recycle PVC plastics into pharmaceutically valuable compounds. The title? “Burning Rubber Duckies with Flashlights: Applications of Photothermal Conversion to PVC Chemical Upcycling,” This spring, he became co-first author for a peer-reviewed paper in the Journal of the American Chemistry Society and was accepted into a PhD program at the University of Wisconsin, which he will attend in the fall of 2026.

Ransom Everglades’ valedictorian in 2021, Medina did not miss a beat when he settled in at one of the nation’s premier academic institutions. “There wasn’t anything that he didn’t excel at,” said longtime Princeton chemistry professor Michael Kelly in a news release from the university. “He was a student with me in three separate courses, earning an A+ in all three. I teach the core laboratory course, which spans the breadth of chemistry – from biology to quantum physics – and I’ve never had one student be the best at all of them before.”

Medina chalked up his academic success in high school and college to a carefully calibrated combination of  “hard work and luck.” But while the list of achievements is, seemingly, never-ending, peers and faculty mentors agree that what sets Medina apart are his humility and drive to get things done. Medina, as his achievements thus far would suggest, is a certified go-getter.

For example, if you asked Medina what brought him back to Ransom Everglades, he might tell you: “It’s something that I’ve kind of been angling for since freshman year [of college].” Coming back to teach was something he had “wanted for a long time,” so he chose to spend his first two college summers working at RE’s Pine Knot Camp. He loved teaching there, and already knew he wanted to try a year of radically different work before attending graduate school, so he made every effort to stay in touch. Not only did coming back to RE make perfect sense career-wise, but, according to Medina’s plans, at least, it had been a long time coming. 

Medina’s now decade-long relationship with Ransom Everglades began serendipitously, with a fateful meeting one day in 2012 at the Starbucks on Bayshore Drive. Medina was, at the time, a student at the Key Biscayne K-8 Center, where his mother is a long-time teacher. He had excelled in his elementary school, so much so that, upon reaching fourth grade, two of his teachers recommended he jump directly to fifth grade instead, which he did. A year later, then in middle school, Medina found himself again the big fish in a too-small pond. One of his teachers, Cliona Walshe-Crawford, knew then-Ransom Everglades middle school teacher Josh D’Alemberte and orchestrated a meeting between the two at the Bayshore Starbucks, where they quickly hit it off.

A few weeks after meeting with D’Alemberte, a 10-year old Medina found himself telling faculty on a campus tour of the upper school that his main interest was “particle physics.” He submitted an application and, a few months later, learned he had earned a spot in RE’s rising sixth-grade class (the seventh-grade class he would have been eligible for had no available spots). He finished his remaining time in fifth grade at Key Biscayne K-8 and prepared for his days as a Raider.

While Medina’s parents, like many of the 17 percent of Ransom Everglades students who receive financial aid, were initially concerned about whether they would be able to afford the tuition, their fears were quickly assuaged by the school’s generous financial assistance.

Looking back, Medina said he was “fortunate to grow up in a household that valued education so much,” and that he had been excited, upon joining RE, to dive deeper into what he saw as a “never-ending wellspring of things to learn” from RE’s stellar faculty. Paraphrasing astronomer Carl Sagan, he reminisced about how “there’s something magical about science when you’re a kid, when you’re learning to understand the world.”

That excitement Medina has felt toward the sciences since his early years is what he hopes to convey to his RE chemistry students this year. It’s the kind of excitement that makes someone read countless Basher Science books (a formative part of Medina’s childhood), watch more Discovery Channel than Disney Channel and skip recess to study the periodic table, which Medina frequently did. “To some degree that was just me, and it was a little bit insane. I make no pretenses about that, you know? I was very self-motivated in that sense. No one was making me do that,” Medina said. “But I do think I was fortunate that my curiosity was sparked very young.”

Teaching chemistry and helping spark a curiosity in chemistry, he said, have their challenges. The subject is often presented as incredibly difficult, or impenetrable, or removed from the real world day-to-day in a way other science subjects, like biology, aren’t. For a lot of students (myself included), chemistry can be found high on the list of “least favorite classes” – but, to Medina, it doesn’t have to be that way, and it shouldn’t be.