Nickolas Roy & Scott Laverdure Scholarship

My name is Naseem Johnson Byah. I was born in Boston, but a chunk of my childhood played out in Morocco and Turkey after my mother was deported. She was a legal immigrant with a work permit, but she was also loud about immigrant rights, and that made her a target. When I was eight, police came to our apartment and took her. I landed in foster care while she fought the system for years. Eventually we reunited and moved across continents, rebuilding life from scratch more times than I can count. I finished school online, my mom as my only teacher, teaching myself to code in whatever room we could rent that month. Education mattered to me because it was the one thing nobody could take. Our housing, our money, our family unit, all of it could disappear overnight. But what I learned, the skills I built, those stayed. I wanted to understand why the systems that were supposed to protect us failed so completely. How could child welfare, immigration enforcement, and the courts all exist in the same city and never once coordinate to keep a kid out of foster care? That question pulled me into computer science. I started to see code as a way to design structure where none existed. At Purdue, I'll study Machine Learning so I can build tools that don't collapse under pressure, tools that might actually catch people who are slipping through gaps. Basketball entered my life for just one season, my freshman year, when I lived in Maine. I played point guard for the Gorham Rams. I was never the best player on the court, but I loved the role. A point guard has to see everything at once: who's open, who's gassed, where the next pass needs to go. You learn to scan for what others miss, and that mental habit has stuck with me. When I debug a project or manage a team spread across time zones, I'm still scanning, still trying to see the whole floor. I also served as the team nutritionist, which surprised me because it meant teammates trusted me with their well-being. I learned that leadership can be handing someone a meal plan and checking in later to see if they stuck to it. That season gave me something rare during those years: consistency. Practice was on Tuesday and Thursday. Game was Friday. Expectations were clear. After the chaos of moving between countries and learning in four different time zones, the structure of a sports team felt like relief. It taught me that I work best inside clear systems with defined roles. That's a big reason I chose Purdue, a place built around engineering structure, where expectations are direct and I can focus on building. My background isn't neat or linear, but it has given me a sharp eye for what holds people together when everything else falls apart. Education, for me, has always been a way to turn that insight into something useful. The discipline I picked up from sports keeps me moving when motivation fades. I'm building toward a future where I design tools that provide the stability I once had to scrape together for myself.

On January 10th, 2008, a phone call from the Tanner Medical Center in Villa Rica, Georgia, to Woburn, Massachusetts, changed my life forever. My adoptive family drove 1,200 miles straight through the night to make me a Woburn Tanner for life. After a game of floor hockey in kindergarten, I became a lifelong hockey player, continuing through high school. At the same time, I ran on both the track and cross-country team, and held a part-time job at the local hockey rink. I played defense because my coaches taught me it was just as important to stop a goal and support my team as it was to score. Playing sports trained my mind to delay gratification, leading to results that come after consistent, prolonged effort, and to put others before yourself. The resilience to push through even when my lungs are full, my heart is pounding, and my legs feel heavy has helped me improve my focus, teaching me to stay consistent in all aspects of my life, especially in my academics and work. I graduated cum laude with a 3.82 GPA, taking honors and AP classes all four years at the Woburn Memorial High School. At the end of my senior cross country season, I was thrilled to find out that I had qualified to compete at the State Championship, which is the ultimate goal of any athlete. However, I was saddened to learn that a fellow teammate, who had been part of the team for all four years, had not qualified. My teammate, who is autistic, worked just as hard as everyone else, if not more, and I believed he deserved the spot far more than I. After a conversation with Coach Hunt, I made the decision to give my spot to him. I felt as if he was owed an opportunity he wouldn’t have received without me stepping aside, prioritizing his needs over my own. Having the chance to compete at the State Championship would have been an incredible memory, but I believe sharing this story is more meaningful than any medal I could have won. He was never told about my decision, I only mention it now to offer insight into my character as an athlete, teammate, and young man. This fall, I will be attending Gordon College, where I will major in Business & Entrepreneurship. I am pursuing college to continue my studies so I can acquire the skills to establish an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued, regardless of their abilities. My goal is to assist those in need and provide job opportunities for individuals who may not have had that chance before. I believe everyone deserves the opportunity to have a meaningful and fulfilling career, and I aim to foster a space that helps people reach their fullest potential, just as Gordon College will do for me. I will adopt and emulate the values they teach, such as fostering community and helping individuals thrive to the best of their abilities, to contribute to a better future. When I was 11, my life was shattered when my father abruptly walked out on my family. I now understand that what helped me during such a dark period of my life was the love and support from my hockey family, but most importantly, the unwavering strength of my mom. My mom works so many hours to support our family and I don’t think it is humanly possible for her to work any more. This scholarship would greatly ease the burden on my family and me.