Marc Firpo’s mother, Elisa Llorens, sensed that her son was destined for academic success when, at age 10, he asked if he could take French lessons because, he explained, “French is the language of diplomacy.”
Whether he becomes a diplomat or not, Marc today speaks fluent French and Spanish. He is also Haldane’s valedictorian.
“I just saw going to school as a job,” says Marc. “I did my assignments, did my homework and one day they called me into the office and told me the good news.”
To hear his teachers tell it, he did those assignments with creativity and curiosity. “He truly tries to understand things,” says Louis Sassano, the AP Statistics teacher. As an example, he pointed to a project that Marc completed as a sophomore in which he wrote a computer program in Python to do a statistical analysis of Minecraft, a video game with an internal marketplace.
“We basically found the best way to flip items for profit,” Marc says.
In a class called Math, Money and You, Sassano was struck by Marc’s approach in an annual stock market competition in which students invest an imaginary $1 million. Most students select blue-chip companies like Nike and McDonald’s. “Marc researched some great stocks and won the project,” Sassano says.
Marc bought international, financial and pharmaceutical stocks like AstraZeneca, Roche, BBVA, NVIDIA and SoFi and saw a 6.67 percent return in two weeks, or about $67,000. “The majority of my success came from a lot of research, having a diverse portfolio and making moves at both market open and close,” he says.
Marc delivered a presentation on the cultural differences toward ultra-processed foods in Europe and the U.S., says Amy Hopkin, his AP French teacher, to obtain a seal of biliteracy in French. “It was fascinating,” she says.
Teachers have learned to leverage Marc as a Spanish translator. “He accompanied the mother of one of my freshmen to open house night,” Hopkin says.
Even though he has lived in Spain and both his parents speak Spanish, Marc commuted weekly to Manhattan to attend classes sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Education. He obtained a C1 fluency certification. Marc has also worked as translator for his parents’ travel-related business.
His Spanish helped him as Haldane’s varsity soccer goalie. He has been known to shout encouragement and instructions to his Spanish-speaking teammates, especially the speedy wings when they are slow getting back on defense.
Marc is headed to Yale University in the fall to study applied math and biochemistry. He would like to work in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, perhaps starting in the private sector and moving to the federal government to negotiate drug prices. “I would love to help fix the medical system and revolutionize how health care is viewed and approached in the U.S.,” he says.
