Growing into Leadership
When Clara McKnight stepped onto the stage in Alumni Gym to deliver the first Senior Speech of the year, she stood before her classmates with confidence and calm. Behind her words was a journey that began years earlier, when she was among the first students to arrive from Seven Rivers as the lower school moved to Miller’s campus. In the audience that morning were current Seven Rivers students—children just beginning the path she has traveled—listening as Clara told the story of how she learned to lead.
Clara admitted she wasn’t always so sure of herself. “I did not believe I had leadership skills, the patience, or courage to take on such a significant role in someone else’s life,” she told the crowd. As an eighth grader, the idea of guiding younger children seemed impossible. But slowly, through the everyday rhythms of campus life, she saw what leadership could look like.
She remembered Miller students mentoring Seven Rivers bikers on the trails, reading aloud the fables the younger students had written in Spanish class, and welcoming them into games in the gym during lunch. Those simple moments of inclusion made an impression. “Miller showed me what it means to lead with generosity,” she said.
That lesson carried her into the summers she spent as a counselor at Triple C Camp, responsible for a group of energetic five-to-seven-year-olds. Leadership there didn’t mean giving speeches or taking the spotlight—it meant tying shoelaces over and over, rereading the same storybook with patience, and showing up with a smile. The significance of that quiet work revealed itself one evening when she went to babysit a camper. The little girl spotted her across the room, screamed her name, and ran to her in excitement. Afterward, the girl’s father turned to Clara and said, “It shows the difference you make in someone’s life and the happiness you make them feel.”
For Clara, that was the moment everything clicked: leadership wasn’t about being the loudest voice in the room, but about being present in the lives of others.
It’s a philosophy she now lives daily. On campus, Clara is a Senior Class representative and student ambassador, helping guide prospective families through Miller’s halls. She works in the school office, where she played a major role in planning events last year. In the classroom, she is enrolled in every AP and Dual Enrollment course offered. On the soccer field, she is both a leader for Miller’s team and a competitor with her elite travel squad. Alongside her twin brother, Sam—also a Seven Rivers graduate—Clara represents the kind of balance, drive, and character Miller hopes to cultivate in every student.
She closed her speech with a lesson she has come to believe deeply: “Never think the small things you do go unnoticed because they will always make an impact for someone.”
For the Seven Rivers students watching from the audience, Clara’s words carried a special resonance. They could see in her story a reflection of their own future possibilities: the journey from wide-eyed newcomers to leaders whose quiet acts of kindness and courage ripple far beyond the Hill.