Highlanders Bring Home Top Prizes for Model UN

Heehu Kim ’27 was honored with a “Best Delegate” award, the equivalent of a gold medal, and Anabel Dunn Richardson ’28 and Mohamed Dailami ’27 earned honorable mentions, the equivalent of bronze medals, at the Bronx Science Model United Nations Conference (SciMUNC XIX), held December 13, 2025, at the Bronx High School of Science in New York City.

The students were among 19 delegates representing The Frederick Gunn School at the annual conference, which attracts hundreds of delegates from schools throughout the region and “prides itself on keeping topics rooted in current events.”

This is the third year that Kim has participated in Gunn’s Model UN co-curricular program. She and Zhanibek Bekov ’26 served as co-captains this year. “They both have a lot of experience and are quite good at what they do,” said Head Coach Ian Rathkey, who led the team with Assistant Coach Polly Kertis, Assistant Coach Karoline Theobald P’09 ’14, and Moira Conlan P’26, Director of Library and Archives and the team’s Citations Coach. 

“There were around 20 other competitors on Heehu’s committee, so winning the top prize means you have to be the best among a lot of other strong MUN delegates,” said Rathkey, who explained that Kim was on a specialized committee called “The Executive Board of ABC Network,” and played as Quinta Brunson, creator and star of the ABC comedy series, “Abbott Elementary.” Her challenge was to decide which shows the network would launch, renew, or cancel as part of the new television season.

“Honestly, I did not expect this award at all,” Kim said. “When you are in a conference, you might think, ‘I might get an award,’ because you can clearly see those stand-out people in your committee. But this time, I never expected that it would be me. I wasn’t even familiar with any American television shows. It was a challenge. You had to think about the cancellation of the shows and I wasn’t sure which shows were popular, and which shows were not popular. I told Mr. Rathkey, ‘I’m just going to go there and see what’s going to happen.’ Until the very end, I wasn’t expecting that I would win.”

Inspired by a Role Model in Real Life
Asked why she chose to participate in the school’s Model UN program, Kim said: “I had a dream since I was nine years old that I wanted to work in the United Nations. I read a book about Ban Ki-moon. He was the Secretary-General of the UN. I read his comic novel. They published it for young kids and I sort of admired him. The second I read it, he became my role model. I said, ‘I want to follow in his path.’” 

Ki-moon was the Foreign Minister of South Korea before he succeeded Kofi Annan as secretary-general in 2007 and was the first East Asian to be selected to the role. He was elected to a second term in 2011. “That was one of the reasons why I chose to study abroad,” said Kim, who is also from South Korea. “Then I heard there was a Model UN program in the school and I was like, ‘That’s my thing to do.’”

Kim said she has learned a lot from her experiences, participating in the annual Yale Model UN Conference (YMUN), which is one of the largest Model UN conferences in the country and draws around 2,000 high school students from all over the world.

Asked what she enjoys about Model UN, Kim said: “I like how I get to know deeply about world problems. I’ve always been passionate about economics and politics and I get to do research, and get to the point of the topic, and see how the world views it, and also how my country views it. Those kinds of things are really fascinating.” 

From Gunn to Yale
In February, Kim served as Secretary General of the Gunn Model United Nations III Conference (GunnMUN). The annual conference, hosted at Gunn, brings together middle and high school students from throughout the region. Gunn partnered with the All-American Model United Nations for this year’s two-day event, which was attended by 160 students from nine schools, including Westover, Northfield Mount Hermon, Kent School, Indian Mountain School,  Dutchess Day School, Rumsey Hall, Holy Cross High School, Valley Regional High School, and New Milford High School.

At YMUN LII, which was held January 15-18 on the campus of Yale University, Highlanders participated in seven different conference sessions. They were called on to debate challenging, global issues at YMUN, including reimagining and standardizing asylum systems “to ensure faster, fairer, and more humane protections for refugees,” and determining how to improve the global water supply and environmental conditions “to create a more sustainable and secure future for everyone.” One Highlander played a historical figure on a specialized committee called “The Qing Imperial Court,” while another faced a fictional crisis resulting from an explosion at Yellowstone National Park. Crisis Committee scenarios are complex because players can change the circumstances of the game as it unfolds, Rathkey noted.

“Every student on the Model UN team is on a different committee. They are essentially on their own for the entire conference. We go over speaking strategy or game plan but it’s like cross country or running,” he said, noting that in addition to competing independently, students had just two weeks to prepare for YMUN this year. “They’ve all been working super hard. We’ve been doing simulations, which is like a scrimmage, and they have to use the vocabulary of Model UN.”

Heading into YMUN, Kim said she was not seeking to win, and wanted to focus instead on mentoring her teammates. “I want to give new students chances to grow. I see a few of them have a higher chance to get an award. I like doing my best but this time I want to enjoy it.”

The Model United Nations co-curricular program at The Frederick Gunn School practices diplomacy aimed at addressing relevant world issues through simulation. Students research world issues, craft and articulate a position on the issues, and collaborate with others to create resolutions. The goal is to practice diplomacy at Model UN conferences. Highlanders have competed in recent years at MUN conferences organized by Harvard, Georgetown, and Yale.