Tony Thompson visits Malden High, strikes gold with students

Nationally renowned motivational speaker brightens the day and local teens’ lives

By Steve Freker

MALDEN – Tony Thompson is a lot. He is energetic, funny, intelligent and worldly – all at once– and that is simply scratching the surface. Tony Thompson is also a living, breathing embodiment of the “pay it forward” movement.

The nationally renowned motivational speaker is a 31-year-old dynamo who visited Malden High School on a brisk fall day – October 24 – and certainly left a lasting impression. For just over 45 minutes in venerable Jenkins Auditorium, Thompson preached, questioned, encouraged, cajoled and casually critiqued the 450-plus members of the Malden High junior Class of 2025. Thompson, along with his wife Christina, own and operate Tony Thompson, Inc., a national motivational speaking-based company out of St. Louis, Missouri. He has spoken nationwide to tens of thousands of individuals at schools, businesses and conventions, spreading high energy and a clear passion that captivates audiences.

“What is your true self and how much of that are you willing to reveal to anyone, on any given day?” Thompson challenged the audience with an all too familiar conundrum faced by teen students worldwide.

He brought up some generally personal topics in a matter-of-fact way that undoubtedly hit home with the students, who obviously made a connection with the guy they just met for the first time. Why else did at least a couple of members of the audience discard any degree of young adult awkwardness and answer every query he posed?

Time and time again, in his own “lead the charge” manner, Thompson kept adding recruits to his newfound circle of followers. He also struck gold a couple of times with his pointed references. Coincidentally, his finishing tale of some real-life fortune seekers looking for real gold in the Midwest hammered home a vital plank in any rising student’s platform: “Don’t ever give up… because you don’t always know how close you are to success.”

Thompson mined some local, anecdotal references germane to only Malden High in his talk and offered sage words of instruction, imploring students to themselves be agents of change – “purveyors of positivity.” Using a skit-like format, he summoned several students onto the Jenkins stage and showed that everyone has individual likes, dislikes, limits and boundaries when it comes to basic needs and wants like money, romance and loyalty.

When the majority of the junior class was dismissed back into the regular school day, with an encouraging “goodbye” to send them on their way, Thompson stayed 20 minutes longer to meet privately with just the Class Officers of the 2025 class and MHS Principal Chris Mastrangelo, to talk about real-time life in the Malden High community. Thompson encouraged the Class of 2025 leaders to be firm in their actions and aggressive in supporting and leading their fellow students to speak up and speak out against negative, draining actions and behavior in the school.

“Instead of focusing too much of your time on negative actions and behavior, encourage and promote the good actions – positive behavior,” Thompson said. “You all can be the ones that make the school culture appealing to everyone else.”

The MHS Principal and Superintendent Dr. Ligia Noriega-Murphy were both on hand for Thompson’s visit.

“He [Thompson] was phenomenal,” Mastrangelo said. “Tony was so spot on with his comments and the encouraging advice he gave to our students.

“We selected the junior class particularly to be the audience for Tony’s visit, since they are the class most likely to be at a crossroads in many parts of their lives,” Mastrangelo said. “We just got a great response from our students. Tony connected so well with all of them.”

“It was an excellent talk. He knew stuff about our school and was able to connect it with the topics he wanted to touch on,” said Malden High junior Bo Stead.

“Tony was just on point about everything,” MHS junior Gabriel Montalvo, who took part in one of the skits, said. “We are lucky he was able to visit and talk with us.”

Chris Macdonald, another Malden junior, was also impressed. “It was excellent. He knows what students our age are going through and he made some great points.”

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