Helena Palladino is a fifteen-year-old Brazilian student currently hacking her high school education via distance learning at American universities. With a strong desire to make a positive difference in the world now, she is putting minimal effort into required courses such as precalculus and English and instead focusing on studies that match her goals and passions: International Relations (Brigham Young), Environmental Sociology (UCLA), and Introduction to Law and Sociology (Post University).

She works with a US-based educator who helps implement a hybrid program of unschooling and advanced scholarship (ditchschool.org). Helena lives with her parents in Sao Paulo and, together, they travel extensively (having lived for extended periods in New Zealand and Australia). While Helena has never visited the United States, it is the focus of much of her environmental activism as she recognizes the power and social responsibility that lies with the US political system and its driving force: consumerism.