When it comes to helping others, I don't take no for an answer. I've never lost that value since I was taught it as a kid, and my career will be no different. When I tell people I'm interested in finance, their typical reaction is almost always "You're going to make a lot of money." Good finance isn't just about making money, it's about guiding others around you to be better off than they would be on their own. Numbers were one of my first big passions in life, to the point that I was called a calculator in elementary school. I may have hated the nickname, but I wasn't going to deny that I had a knack for it. As I got closer to college, I knew I had to find something that would incorporate that in a way I loved, and finance presented as the best choice. To me, finance was all about solving problems of differing complexity. That complexity drives determination, efficiency, and creativity, all of which I enjoy and strive to find an outlet for. That would fulfill my need to be driven, but it wouldn't quite get me where I wanted when it comes to helping others. When I thought about becoming a financial advisor, the aspects I wanted in my career started to line up. I could challenge myself, have room to grow, and help others be more financially independent. Since then, I haven't questioned that it's the path I want to pursue. As a financial advisor, I can help those in need to bring them from financial insecurity to a stable future and drive economic change in companies and local governments alike. If that path is better accomplished by someone else, I can at least be the person who guides them in their financial journey. There's unlimited possibility of what I can do and who I can help flourish. To accomplish this, I plan to take steps over the next 5-10 years to learn how to start a community project or my own company. I would do this by networking, taking skills classes, and learning from mentors, but I also know that there are things I have to do for myself to boost my motivation to do so. What I’m doing in the meantime and will continue to do is incorporate habits that promote my physical and mental well-being. When I’m not learning the newest industry trends or coordinating with connections, I’ll be exercising consistently, running half marathons, practicing martial arts, or doing any other practice that focuses my body and mind. Of course, I will also make sure to stay focused in college and walk away with a degree in high standing. I have many aspirations and visions for what I want to do with my career. Finance has many avenues to live up to those aspirations, and I know I can set myself up to be a resource for myself and others. It may be a rough plan for now, but that’s where all good projects start.

I’m usually the opposite of what most people think of as a leader. I’m introverted, struggle socially, and constantly fight with myself about self-confidence. I find that a good leader isn’t defined by their struggles or shortcomings; rather, they’re defined by how they’re perceived and what they can inspire people to do and be. I often think of my leadership as “shadow leadership” in most cases. My first time experiencing it was on my flag football team in my early years of high school. The reason I call it shadow leadership is because I find myself in the background rather than the forefront. When I was on the field, I would guide new teammates, inspire old ones to keep going and channel their frustration into playing, and play in the positions that didn’t get the glory. It was never an explicit responsibility that I had, but it was clear from my connection with my teammates that it was something they needed and appreciated, so I didn’t mind. This carried over into my friendships, where I would often be the one generating ideas for others for hangouts, being a shoulder to lean on, and diffusing conflicts. I understand now that it was an unhealthy position to be in, but trial by fire taught me how I cold be a good leader and what that comprises of. I make myself a good leader by putting my focus on three key tenets: helping others help themselves, giving them boosts of morale when they need it, and starting discussions so that ideas can start to flow freely. This often means breaking up awkward moments, being vulnerable, and opening up myself so that the people I connect with can see that I have struggles and challenges too. I like to think of the balance of helping others as I would the balance of a cup of coffee. With coffee, it’s good to add the right amount of creamer or sugar to make it the best possible. Too little and the coffee can taste bitter or bland, too much and you no longer have any flavor from the coffee. With people, if you provide too little help or give too little effort, it can seem disingenuous or forced, which will make them disengage. Too much help or effort, and you start to overwhelm them and push them away from you. I work to find this balance with others constantly so that we can move forward productively, as we all need help from others to get by. Although I’m not the typical definition of a leader, I still do my best to lead and help others when it’s necessary. It’s a more hands-off approach, but I’m fine knowing that I was able to help in whatever way I could when it counted most. Every win, big or small, counts, and being a leader means capitalizing on those wins.

When it comes to helping others, I don't take no for an answer. I've never lost that value since I was taught it as a kid, and my career will be no different. When I tell people I'm interested in finance, their typical reaction is almost always "You're going to make a lot of money." Good finance isn't just about making money, it's about guiding others around you to be better off than they would be on their own. Numbers were one of my first big passions in life, to the point that I was called a calculator in elementary school. I may have hated the nickname, but I wasn't going to deny that I had a knack for it. As I got closer to college, I knew I had to find something that would incorporate that in a way I loved, and finance presented as the best choice. To me, finance was all about solving problems of differing complexity. That complexity drives determination, efficiency, and creativity, all of which I enjoy and strive to find an outlet for. That would fulfill my need to be driven, but it wouldn't quite get me where I wanted when it comes to helping others. When I thought about becoming a financial advisor, the aspects I wanted in my career started to line up. I could challenge myself, have room to grow, and help others be more financially independent. Since then, I haven't questioned that it's the path I want to pursue. As a financial advisor, I can help those in need to bring them from financial insecurity to a stable future and drive economic change in companies and local governments alike. If that path is better accomplished by someone else, I can at least be the person who guides them in their financial journey. There's unlimited possibility of what I can do and who I can help flourish.

There’s no feeling in the world like helping others succeed. For me, those moments came on the football field, at school with my friends, and with people who needed a helping hand to get by. My friends and my teammates were always there for me like family, so I always made sure to return the favor. My parents got divorced close to when I was seven. There were plenty of kids with both parents and plenty with only one as I was going through my early years, but I never met anyone who had the experience I did. It was hard for them to understand, just as it was hard for me to understand. I learned to take in the people around me, mainly my friends, as family. They were the ones I shared my life and my story with, and I learned a lot about being there for others by doing that. I still had my parents to lean on, but I needed a family unit that wasn’t two single parents working together. When I moved to Las Vegas for school, I charted out to continue living that purpose in whatever way I could. I found success in coaching a kids’ football team with my roommate and becoming a leader in a club on campus. I consider the club to be my way of finding people to call family in Las Vegas, and I consider coaching my way to give back as my football coaches did for me over the years. In addition to both of those, I recently finished participating in a book drive for the homeless of Las Vegas, and it has gone on to reinforce the lessons I’ve learned throughout my life. No one gets through life alone. We need friends, family, coaches, peers, and other kind strangers to get where we need to go. I’ll likely be limited in what I can do over the next few years because I will need to spend time focusing on school and starting my career, but I still want to find time to help others regardless. To me, that’s what this scholarship means. It’s one step closer to financial freedom and personal freedom, which I can use to guide and help others. When people in our communities and our cultures need help, it’s up to everyone capable of helping to assist in whatever way they can. My education serves as an experience to hit the ground running, learn about my new community, and see where I can make an impact. The easier and more accessible I’m able to make it for myself, the more I can help others. Generosity is a cycle that keeps repeating as long as we let it, and I don’t plan to stop the cycle any time soon.

Mushrooms, magical flowers, superpowers, and reptile dictators were a key part of my childhood. As interesting as that combination would be in real life, it would likely go far more poorly than Nintendo tends to portray it. I grew up loving the Mario series, from the original Super Mario Bros of the NES era to the most recent release of Super Mario Bros Wonder. I love most entries in the series, but none capture the same feeling I get playing New Super Mario Bros Wii. I don’t remember the first time I played on the Wii with my family, but it had a lasting effect regardless of when I started. Super Mario Bros was always a favorite of my dad, and he passed that on to my brother and I. He grew up playing some of the original titles on the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and Gameboy, and the joy that he felt when reminiscing on those experiences made our family gaming sessions even better. Unfortunately, after my parents divorced, our paths split off to other interests. Even though we strayed from those childhood memories, we always had the option to go back. We still had the Wii with Super Mario Bros alongside it, but, as time went on and my brother and I added more to our schedules, we rarely found the time to sit down and make it happen. My dad, with his undying motivation to make that happen, finally found a night with all of us home in 2020, several years since we had last played. As we booted the game up and settled back in, our old ways came back with the addition of the flair of our current selves. In my family, banter, friendly jabs, and sarcasm are par for the course at all times, and that day was no different. I didn’t play for the first level, as there were only two controllers for the three of us. It was supposed to be fairly easy, as the start of many games tend to be, but karma had other plans for my brother. As if trying to tempt fate, before loading into the level, my brother decided it would be wise to say (in his usual sarcasm): “Dying on the first level is for losers.” His bravado held strong even when we teased him for it, until about 20 seconds later. Because of his overconfidence, he had forgotten about the iconic first Goomba in his attempt to get a mushroom. The Goomba, as if given a new purpose, showed my brother that it was very possible for someone to die on the first level. Between my brother’s look of shock and defeat and the speed at which my brother lived up to his words, all of us couldn’t stop laughing. In that moment, all of the joy and excitement we had from years earlier came back to an even greater extent than before. All of us, in our own unique ways, were reconnected to the experiences of my childhood in a better way. To me, that is what Super Mario Bros, both the Wii version and not, will always be. Whether it’s being competitive in the stressful moment of taking on a boss or laughing uncontrollably at our various slip-ups, it will always be a representation of my childhood and my family. It may have taken us nearly a decade to reconnect to it, but those memories are still some of my most cherished moments.

Everyone has that one friend who thinks they’re invincible, convinced that there’s nothing that could possibly go wrong. In most circumstances, it only takes an instance or two of getting hit with reality to stop that way of thinking. In the other few cases, it only adds fuel to the fire. After all, if the world tries to strike them down and fails more than once, what’s going to stop them? I didn’t have a lot of friends who fell into the second category, but I never minded. After all, for the majority of my life, I’ve been that friend. My getaway, hobby, and passion was always football. I started when I was in 1st grade, but I really got going when I was in 3rd grade, when I signed up for an NFL-sponsored league. This wasn’t a tackle league, so it was supposed to be more safe and less competitive. Seems simple enough, right? If there’s anything that I have a knack for, it’s turning simple answers into a complicated mess. For the most part, though, the answer to that question was no. The first rule of football is teamwork. You win as a team, lose, grow, succeed, fail, you name it. I always took it to heart, which is why every major injury I ever got was in conjunction with a teammate. Although tackle football is far more physical, they compensate with pads and helmets. Helmets are useful for many things, most of all head injuries. Flag football is played without helmets, so it was only natural that I would start my injury streak with a concussion. I was running in from the sideline, ready to take the ball from my teammate in the greatest defensive play of my life. Instead, I used my head as a weapon of mass destruction – on my teammate’s head. Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t all that bad. It hurt, to be sure, but I wasn’t all too dizzy, I recovered rather quickly and the bump on my head faded in no time at all. Even better, my teammate walked away with nothing more than some minor pain. It may have gone in my favor, but I still wasn’t enthused to get another concussion three months later. My greatest team play marked the general downfall of my time in football, right before I was to turn the grand age of 16. It was the last day of my high school sophomore year, and I felt like a champion going into that day’s practice. We were scrimmaging against another team of similar age and standing to practice for the championship, and it was my job to make our quarterback move. He was decent under pressure, but a good blitz brought him down more often than not. On one particular play, that was truly put to the test. I was still full of energy, and I ran at him with everything I had. He started to wind up, cutting the window closer and closer until I was nearly at him. He raised his arm, prepared to throw the ball, and released…into my nose. If there’s one word I would use to describe breaking my nose, I’d go with surreal or bewildered. I’d been hit in the nose and started bleeding from it several times before, but this time hurt a lot worse. I went to sit down and take care of it, but I didn’t want to let it stop me from practicing. That quickly changed when my coach told me in no uncertain terms: “Kid, your nose is bent. You’re not playing.” Needless to say, that was not an ideal trip to the ER to end off my sophomore year. More recently, I decided to participate in a half marathon with a college club. For the most part, it’s reasonable to set aside at least two or three months to start training to get the body used to running for long periods. Me, an amateur runner at best with only some experience running more than two miles? I gave myself three weeks. It sounded like a bad idea at the time, but, ultimately, it could be much worse. It isn’t football, right? Once again, the answer is no. My training went well for two and a half weeks. When there were only 4 days left until the half marathon, tragedy would strike. As I was walking down the stairs of my campus dorm complex, where I then proceeded to roll my ankle sideways and down one of the steps. Luckily, I felt no pain at the time and continued my training as planned. As it turns out, that would be because it was going to hurt starting two days later. With little time left to get the injury checked and ready to go, I made a decision exceeding the blind faith of the first: I ran the half marathon anyway. I only have myself to thank that I will have indefinitely recurring tendonitis whenever I run. When it comes to the simple question that I should’ve asked myself from the start of my injury-prone adventure, “What could go wrong?”, I’ve far exceeded the point where I can take back my decisions. However, if someone were to ask me that same question now, I’d likely tell them that everything can and almost definitely will go wrong, but that it won’t change my decision. Some of my greatest accomplishments, alongside the terrible injuries, have come from facing that question head-on. Realistically, I suppose the more accurate term would be head-first.

When it comes to helping others, I don't take no for an answer. I've never lost that value since I was taught it as a kid, and my career will be no different. When I tell people I'm interested in finance, their typical reaction is almost always "You're going to make a lot of money." Good finance isn't just about making money, it's about guiding others around you to be better off than they would be on their own. Numbers were one of my first big passions in life, to the point that I was called a calculator in elementary school. I may have hated the nickname, but I wasn't going to deny that I had a knack for it. As I got closer to college, I knew I had to find something that would incorporate that in a way I loved, and finance presented as the best choice. To me, finance was all about solving problems of differing complexity. That complexity drives determination, efficiency, and creativity, all of which I enjoy and strive to find an outlet for. That would fulfill my need to be driven, but it wouldn't quite get me where I wanted when it comes to helping others. When I thought about becoming a financial advisor, the aspects I wanted in my career started to line up. I could challenge myself, have room to grow, and help others be more financially independent. Since then, I haven't questioned that it's the path I want to pursue. As a financial advisor, I can help those in need to bring them from financial insecurity to a stable future and drive economic change in companies and local governments alike. If that path is better accomplished by someone else, I can at least be the person who guides them in their financial journey. There's unlimited possibility of what I can do and who I can help flourish.

You don't need to save the world to be someone's superhero. A book or cup of coffee is all it takes to make a difference. I learned that lesson in January of this year when I partook in volunteer opportunities and a dedicated book drive to help the homeless. It was a new start to my journey of learning about the Las Vegas and Phoenix communities I was a part of, and I carry that forward into the opportunities I pursue now. In the last year, I’ve taken on various volunteering opportunities and events, participated in coaching, and took steps to become a leader in my day-to-day interactions and activities. As an assistant coach, vice president of a campus club, and member of two community projects through the UNLV Honors College, it’s been proven to me that it’s possible to do good one step at a time. Community impact is possible in a variety of ways, and I plan to use the insight I’ve gained to keep that impact going. In the short term, I still plan to do volunteer work, coach, lead, and many other activities to help others. In the long term, my goal is to help others through my career in my dream job as a financial advisor. As a financial advisor, I want to advise and give others the necessary tools to achieve financial literacy and independence. Those I help can then spread what they have learned to their friends and family, thus paving the way for a more stable and happy community. Many of my closest friends have dealt with the effect of financial burdens, and I want to change that for as many others as possible. Later on, when I feel that I’ve accomplished all that I can as a financial advisor, I want to continue to spread knowledge as a college professor, community advocate, and mentor. My accounting professor, Danny Siciliano, shared his inspiration with us for why he became a professor, and his path resonated with me in a way that I didn’t anticipate. He started in college unsure of what he wanted to do in the world of finance, slowly climbing the ladder until he retired from a C-suite position for a Las Vegas casino. After enjoying his retirement for a few years, he became a professor to pass on his knowledge to future generations and inspire them to succeed to a degree far greater than his own. He passed on numerous valuable personal and career lessons to all of his students, and I want to do much the same for others. Until I reach that point, I will continue to help my community in the ways that are currently working and build up the skills I will need for my future. I might not be a superhero, a world-class scientist, or an aspiring engineer, but I won’t let that stop me from being there for others when they need it.