One of my favorite questions to ask people is, "What do you wish you had known when you were seventeen?" I've asked entrepreneurs, investors, engineers, nonprofit leaders, and public officials some version of that question through CoffeeChat. Their answers are rarely technical. Instead, they tell me they wish someone had explained investing earlier, encouraged them to ask for help, or introduced them to careers they didn't know existed. What strikes me isn't what they learned. It's how long they had to wait to learn it. Growing up, I didn't know what private equity was or how retirement accounts worked. Neither did many of my classmates. Some of us had parents who had never attended college. Others, like my own family, were building businesses while learning unfamiliar financial systems at the same time. I began to realize that opportunity isn't distributed equally—not because talent is, but because information isn't. That realization has shaped the impact I want to make. At the Hartford Treasurer's Office, I helped develop financial literacy resources for young people because I wanted teenagers to encounter these ideas before they signed their first lease or opened their first credit card. Through CoffeeChat, I connected students with professionals whose careers once felt impossible to reach. At JAF Creative Solutions, I learned that even architecture and infrastructure depend on helping communities understand the decisions that affect them. Although these experiences look different, they all taught me the same lesson: people make better decisions when they understand the systems around them. College will allow me to understand those systems more deeply. By studying business, economics, and human behavior, I hope to understand not only how markets function, but why some communities consistently face greater barriers to opportunity than others. I want to build solutions that are informed by both data and lived experience. The people who inspire me most are my parents. They built a business despite language barriers, unfamiliar regulations, and financial uncertainty. They showed me that resilience can create opportunity, but they also showed me how much easier that journey could have been if someone had simply explained the rules. I can't change the obstacles my parents faced. What I can change is how many people have to face those same obstacles alone. Years from now, I hope a student walks into a college classroom, an internship, or their first job already knowing the things I had to discover through trial and error. If my work can shorten someone else's learning curve—even by a single conversation—then I'll know my education has become something larger than a degree. It will have become an opportunity shared.

When I was younger, I thought business was about selling things. My parents owned a restaurant, so business meant greeting customers, carrying plates, and hoping Friday night was busy enough to cover another week of expenses. As I got older, I began seeing everything that happened behind the dining room. I learned why prices changed when suppliers raised costs. I watched my parents decide whether hiring another employee was worth the risk. I sat in conversations with landlords where one decision could affect months of revenue. Business wasn't just transactions—it was a series of decisions that shaped people's lives. That realization changed what I wanted to study. Over the past few years, I've found myself drawn to every opportunity that helped me understand decision-making at a larger scale. At the Hartford Treasurer's Office, I watched investment managers explain how billions of dollars are allocated. Through my research at the University of Connecticut, I saw how data could uncover patterns in healthcare that weren't visible before. At JAF Creative Solutions, I learned how business decisions influence the communities where people live, work, and raise families. Although the industries were different, I noticed the same pattern. Every system is ultimately built on choices made by people. Business gives us the tools to understand those choices. I want to study business because I don't believe markets exist separately from people. Every balance sheet represents someone's livelihood. Every investment reflects priorities. Every policy creates incentives that influence how individuals behave. The questions that interest me most aren't simply, "How do organizations grow?" but "Who benefits when they do?" and "How can they create value that extends beyond profit?" Earning this degree will change my life in practical ways. As a first-generation college student from a low-income family, it will provide opportunities that my parents worked tirelessly to create but never had themselves. It will give me the knowledge, network, and credibility to enter rooms that once felt completely unfamiliar. More importantly, it will change how I am able to serve others. Throughout high school, I've worked to expand financial literacy because I've seen how confusing financial systems can prevent capable people from accessing opportunities. That work has convinced me that understanding business carries a responsibility. Knowledge becomes most valuable when it helps someone else make a better decision. My parents taught me that hard work creates opportunity. My education will teach me how to multiply it. I hope to build a career where business is more than a profession. I want it to be a way of designing better systems—ones that help families build wealth, entrepreneurs take risks, and communities thrive. If my parents' generation built stability through sacrifice, I hope mine can build opportunity through understanding.

Growing up, college was never the finish line. It was simply the next place I needed to get to. My parents never told me what classes to take or how to build a résumé because they had never gone through the process themselves. Instead, they showed me what opportunity looked like before it ever reached a classroom. It looked like twelve-hour shifts at our restaurant. It looked like learning enough English to serve customers while building a business from scratch. It looked like taking risks without knowing whether they would work. As I got older, I realized those sacrifices had given me access to rooms my parents had never entered. I found myself sitting in investment meetings at the Hartford Treasurer's Office, conducting research with the University of Connecticut, and building financial literacy programs for students who, like me, hadn't grown up speaking the language of investing or wealth-building. The more experiences I had, the more I noticed a pattern. The biggest barriers weren't always intelligence or work ethic. They were information. People can't pursue opportunities they don't know exist. They can't advocate for themselves in systems they don't understand. That realization has shaped what college means to me. I don't see college as four years spent collecting knowledge. I see it as four years learning how the systems around us actually work—economics, government, business, psychology—and, more importantly, why they sometimes fail the people they're supposed to serve. The more I understand those systems, the better equipped I'll be to improve them. As a first-generation college student, I know there will be moments when everyone else seems to know something I don't. I'm used to that feeling. Every internship I've started, every research project I've joined, and every new field I've explored has begun with me asking questions that felt embarrassingly simple. Over time, I've learned that being new isn't a disadvantage. It's what allows me to notice assumptions other people no longer question. I hope my education gives me more than technical knowledge. I hope it gives me the ability to connect ideas across disciplines and translate them into opportunities for others. Whether that means expanding financial literacy, improving public policy, or building organizations that make complex systems easier to navigate, I want my work to reduce the distance between opportunity and the people searching for it. For my parents, success meant creating possibilities they never had. For me, college is about making sure those possibilities don't stop with my generation.

Growing up, I thought adulthood began at eighteen. For my family, it arrived much earlier. While my classmates worried about homework after school, I worried about customer complaints, employee schedules, and whether our restaurant would have enough business that week. I watched my parents work through holidays, birthdays, and weekends—not because they wanted to, but because small businesses don't pause when life does. As I grew older, my responsibilities expanded from seating customers to helping manage payroll, marketing, and even advocating for our business when problems arose. Those experiences changed the way I think about success. Achievement was never something I pursued solely for myself. Every opportunity I earned had the potential to make life a little easier for the people who sacrificed so much before me. Being the first in my family to attend college means carrying more than my own ambitions. It means proving that the risks my parents took in leaving China created possibilities that extended beyond one generation. It means recognizing that education is not simply a personal milestone but an investment in my family's future. That perspective has shaped my sense of purpose. I want to build systems that give other families the stability and opportunities mine fought to create—from expanding financial literacy to making institutions easier to navigate for those entering them for the first time. My parents built the foundation. My purpose is to make sure more families have the chance to build on theirs.