ERLANGER, Ky. — Diamonique Barnett can do it all. The senior at Lloyd Memorial High School in Erlanger is a star student, with a 4.1 GPA and multiple academic awards and lists math as her favorite subject.
She's also a standout athlete. She's been playing volleyball since 3rd grade and has been on the high school team since 8th grade. This year she was team captain and MVP. She's also captain of the Juggernaut tennis team.
When it comes to leadership, she said, “You have to be able to communicate with people. You have to be able to trust people. You have to be able to work together as a group to achieve that common goal.”
She’s also active with community service, receiving the “Scholarship of Service” Award from the City of Elsmere, where she also served as “Mayor for the Day.”
School Counselor Jennifer Glass said Diamonique’s well-rounded success is the result of a team effort, explaining, “It’s a combined effort to raise a child. The parental piece, the school piece, the community piece, all the stakeholders have to come together. And when they do, what you get is Diamonique.”
Diamonique knows she is considered a role model, and she leans into the job. “I want to inspire young women by showing them that no matter what discrimination or gender bias you face, you can do anything you want,” she said. “I feel like with our generation, that’s already starting to happen and I want that to continue into the younger generations of kids who are in elementary school right now. I don’t want them to just grow up seeing all the men, I want them to also see women in those powerful roles. Even if that’s just going to college and being a STEM major, something that women aren’t really in, I want them to see that they can do that and even if they are outnumbered that you can still be the one to push through and do it.”
As part of her participation in the Upward Bound program, she won the award for Best Symposium and Written Paper for her study of “Trigonometry in Forensics.”
That’s a clue toward what she wants to do with her future. “My biggest career goal would actually be to go to the FBI,” she said. “I know that seems really farfetched, but it’s really been a dream of mine to go to the FBI, mainly criminal profiling. I’m really interested in the psychological behavior behind criminals, which is really what I want to do.”
She’ll study criminal psychology at the University of Louisville this fall, where she’ll enter as a sophomore because she’s already taken so many college credits.
Then watch out bad guys, because future Agent Barnett will be coming for you! But before that, she’s a deserving Spectrum News 1 High School Scholar.