Hailey senior Takes WRHS Lessons Abroad
By Mark Dee
Brett Poggi likes to see things for himself.
That curiosity led the Hailey senior from Wood River High School to the U.S. Senate, to the Idaho Statehouse, to, over spring break, a long-haul bus rolling through the Russian countryside. And, in the fall, it will lead Poggi to the Bronx, where he’ll enroll at Fordham University, part of the first generation of his family to go to college.
When he does, he’ll go with plenty of support. Through his work and extracurriculars in high school, Poggi earned funding as a National Rural and National First-Generation Scholar, said WRHS College and Career Counselor Hallie Star. And, on May 21, he won the AGL Foundation First Generation Scholarship among other awards from local organizations, including the Blaine County Education Foundation.
“His impressive list of skills demonstrates leadership, curiosity and a true desire for learning,” said BCEF Executive Deborah Van Law, who awarded the scholarship in May.
None of this was exactly the plan when he stepped on campus as a freshman in 2021. A somewhat reluctant Dual Immersion student, Poggi’s father worked in construction and his mother in administrative roles at Power Engineers. He saw that the engineers she worked beside made a good living. At first, that’s where he aimed. But Poggi prides himself on flexibility, and he went where his interests took him. His sister insisted he try Speech and Debate; by senior year he was team captain. His attentions shifted, less focused on how things worked and more on how people—and, with them, societies, and economies—did. During sophomore year he worked as a page in the U.S. Senate. Last winter, he served the same role in the Idaho Statehouse. In between, he started to travel, and to build his personal worldview through his own eyes.
Poggi thanks a pair of Spanish teachers for nudging him towards the wider world. He hadn’t left the country before his junior year. But Shannon Moss and Liji Waite spoke so beautifully about their time abroad, and it showed. It wasn’t just in the mellifluous accents of the two Dual Immersion instructors. It was the way they saw cultures, both foreign and their own, and the way it seemed to open up in them a new way of seeing people. Waite had lived in South Korea and Venezuela, visiting many other countries along the way. Poggi said Moss has visited Spain upwards of 50 times; indeed, she earned a Master’s degree in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Gallica in the country’s northwest.
“I loved them so much,” Poggi said. “And just the things they taught me about the world, kind of sharing their experiences and what brought them to where they were today. I was like, ‘I want to do that. That sounds so cool.’”
Inspired, Poggi saved money from his front-of-the-house job at Powerhouse, the restaurant on Hailey’s Main Street. His parents were supportive; they taught him to make good decisions, he said. He booked a ticket, solo, to London. Next trip, he flew to Sweden. From there, he rode a train down through the Low Countries to Paris, where he’d coaxed his parents to meet him.
In March, he went even further. Poggi flew to Russia—something the State Department currently advises against—to learn firsthand how the Russian people lived away from the front lines of its war with Ukraine. As he explored Russia, heading through the Baltic States and Poland, to Germany and Austria, he was struck by how much he recognized in the people he met. He particularly liked moving through the rural landscape, on a train or a bus, stopping off in towns to see a slice of life often left out of textbooks or broadcasts.
“I think it’s cool to go to the city, see the city center, some historical cathedral,” he said. “But just being able to see the countryside—that’s important, too. It makes you feel a lot more connected, I think, to other places. Because when I look at Idaho, you know, it’s mostly countryside. It’s just people living their lives. That’s the same thing I see when I look out those train windows.”
Poggi plans to major International Political Economy at Fordham, an interdisciplinary program studying the ties and complexities of our increasingly globalized world. After that, maybe law school. Maybe not. He’s drawn by that way of thinking, always organized and rational, like he is on the debate stage. As always, he’s flexible. Yet the further he goes, and the more he sees, the more he appreciates the valley he came from.
“I really do love this place with all my heart,” he said.
