Ale’a Trinidad Duenas
Guam
Miss Al'e’a Trinidad Duenas comes from the island of Saipan of the Northern Mariana Islands. She is a freshman at the University of Guam studying Integrative Biology. Her goal is to receive her Bachelor's Degree in Biology and ultimately return to Saipan, CNMI and give back to her community.
Ale’a is based out of The Micronesia Challenge Guam program under UOG’s SeaGrant Program, with her mentor, Ms. Clementine Schnabel, the Guam MC Coordinator. Ale’a has been working with Ms. Schnabel since September 2023 and has been creating social media posts that promote conservation and sustainability practices on Guam. Ale’a has also been working on updating the Guahan Challenge Activity Book originally created in 2012 by a former Young Champion.
Jeaulian Perez
Guam
Jeaulian is originally born in Saipan but moved back to back from Guam to the Philippines to learn Tagalog and more about his mother and father's culture. He moved back to Guam to finish his education in Tiyan High School. He is currently a freshman at the University of Guam and is studying Integrative Biology and plans to take Masters in Marine Biology after a break from his current studies. He worked for the National Parks and Services in the summer of 2022 as a Youth Conservation Corps member that gave him the experience on how the parks are maintained and managed by the hard working employees of the NPS - which reinforced his passion and love of Guam's unique ecosystem of native wildlife and habitats prominent on Guam.
Fun fact! While Jeaulian is passionate of the ocean and its inhabitants, he has a fear which is termed Thalasophobia, fear of the deep ocean, but that never stopped him in wanting to learn and explore more of the vast ocean in which only less than 10% has been explored. Even though he is afraid of the ocean, he still plans to become a marine biologist and make contributions to explore more of the uncharted deep blue!
