You are President of your high school’s Speech and Debate team. Where did your love of debate come from? What advice do you have for other students who are looking to improve their public speaking skills?
I have always been one that loves to share my ideas, even when others did not see things similarly to me. Classroom debates in English or History class were events that I always looked forward to being a part of, and because of that I decided to try out my Speech and Debate team during my sophomore year of high school and I instantly fell in love. Throughout the years, my love for debate and public speaking only grew stronger to the point that I loved helping others improve their own public speaking skills.

You spend much of your free time involved in your local community teaching adults how to use technology to advance their education and careers. Why is this work meaningful for you?
Growing up as a first-generation eldest child, I always found it to be important to help my parents with using technology as a significant resource. Then, when I learned about a program that does the same as I did growing up, I was thrilled to join it because I would help adults learn the same things I taught my own parents. Knowing that I am playing such an important role in these people’s lives is something that I hold so closely because although I won’t be making a big change in the world, I will still be making a significant change in these people’s lives.

If you could invent something that would make life easier for people, what would you invent?
If I could invent something that would make life easier for people is a way to sustainably grow food in unconventional places, especially areas with no fertile land and/or in the homes of people living in densely packed areas. It would allow for growing crops sustainability indoors, thus providing people for the opportunity to make their own food at a low cost. With this, I hope that it would make at least a dent to the issue of food insecurity, and help families have a chance to have healthy food on their dining table.

Fill in the blanks.
The wisest thing anyone ever told me was to “always speak my mind” and it helped me to become a more confident speaker, as I would voice my opinion even if no one else saw it the same way as me because I knew that every opinion or perspective was still important.

What is one goal you would like to achieve in the next five years?
In the next five years, I would like to see myself graduating from college with a major in International Relations and a minor in Economics. However, more importantly, I would hope that within the next 5 years that I have learned more about world cultures and the way of life for people through first-hand experiences. I aspire to take those perspectives and apply them in a field where I’d be constantly helping diverse groups of people.

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