Tiffany Xa Receives Palm Springs Pathfinders’ Youth of the Year Award

(Palm Springs, CA) The Boys & Girls Club of Palm Springs (BGCPS) has announced that Tiffany Xa, a senior at Palm Springs High School, has been named the 2025 Youth of the Year. Along with the title, she will be receiving a scholarship funded by the Palm Springs Pathfinders through the Harold and Judy Stack Scholarship Fund totaling over $12,000 to help her on her journey to earning a 4-year college degree. Two other exceptional teens were honored as runners up – Brooklyn Seever and Jonathan Velasquez.

Xa has been a member of the Boys & Girls Club of Palm Springs for 11 years, continually proving herself to be a hard-working, driven, responsible and well-rounded individual through her unwavering dedication to her academics and leadership involvement in the Club community.

While taking several AP courses and maintaining over a 4.0 GPA, Xa has volunteered almost 300 hours as part of BGCPS’s Keystone Club over the past four years. She has volunteered her time teaching youth how to swim at the BGCPS, providing them with the opportunity to become more comfortable, confident and safer in the water.

“As a leader, I’ve held the hands of those from difficult homes – of people who struggle with finding a place in America,” said Xa. “We have the power to change the lives around us for the better. I believe it is our duty to create the path for those after us. That is why I will continue to strive towards a world where we do not have to scrape by to survive – a world where our children can be proud to live.”

Xa has volunteered for several Tahquitz Creek Clean-ups by picking up trash and has been part of the BGCPS Youth Basketball Leagues for the past few years – ensuring game days ran smoothly by assisting with set-up and take-down as well as scorekeeping. Throughout high school, Tiffany has also volunteered a lot of her time in the BGCPS Children Center, serving as a mentor to younger Club members.

“In addition to the hundreds of hours Tiffany dedicates as a volunteer at the Club, we’ve also been blown away by her commitment to the Club’s solvency by taking charge of budgeting and fundraising tasks,” said Margaret Keung, Executive Director of the Boys & Girls Club of Palm Springs. “The Youth of the Year award helps foster a new generation of leaders who are fully prepared to live and lead in a diverse and integrated world economy, and Tiffany’s extraordinary efforts to ‘give back’ to other youth make while excelling in her academics make her extremely deserving of this honor.”

The Youth of the Year program has honored and celebrated the nation’s most inspiring teens and their incredible journeys. Stories of outstanding leadership, service, academic excellence and dedication to living a healthy lifestyle have made Youth of the Year America’s premier leadership and recognition program for teens.

This fall, Xa plans on attending California State University – San Bernardino, majoring in Business Administration with a concentration in Accounting.

Xa added, “My time at the Boys & Girls Club of Palm Springs has been an incredible adventure. It’s a journey that has allowed me to discover myself, lose my way, and find a better version of who I am. The Club has been like a second home, shaping me into the leader I am today and preparing me for whatever lies ahead. They were right – great futures truly do start here.”