I learned about addiction the same way I learned about gravity, not from a textbook but from watching what it does when it gets ahold of something. I come from a family where substance abuse is not a distant thing that happened to strangers. It is part of the family history. Part of the cautionary tales. Part of the grief that sits down at the dinner table uninvited and stays long after everyone else has gone home. Addiction is a strange inheritance. Some families pass down recipes. Some pass down jewelry. Some pass down stories. Mine passed down warnings. I grew up watching people I loved wrestle with substances that promised relief and delivered ruin. I watched bright people become smaller versions of themselves. I watched pain search for an exit and find a trapdoor instead. I watched people who were loved deeply hurt themselves and the people around them. I learned very young that addiction does not happen to one person. It happens to entire families. It spreads. It radiates. It reaches into generations that were not even born yet. Because of that, I have spent much of my life making conscious choices about the person I wanted to become. I am autistic, ADHD, OCD, dyslexic, and dyscalculic. I know what it feels like to want relief. I know what it feels like to live inside a brain that never stops moving. I know what it feels like to be lonely. To be bullied. To be overwhelmed. To feel like an alien in rooms where everyone else seemed to receive an instruction manual I never got. I understand exactly why people reach for things that promise escape. I chose something else. I chose poetry. I chose faith. I chose service. I chose obsession in its holiest form, the relentless pursuit of learning, building, creating, researching, teaching, loving, and trying to leave every place better than I found it. People often talk about addiction as the inability to stop doing something. I think recovery begins with finding something better to devote yourself to. My life is full of things that demand my attention. My students demand it. My nonprofit demands it. My research demands it. My writing demands it. My calling demands it. I have spent years pouring every ounce of myself into building things that help other people. Not because I am immune to suffering, but because I know exactly what suffering can become when it is left alone in the dark. These experiences shaped my relationships. They taught me that people are complicated. pain is complicated. That love is not always enough to save someone, but it is still worth giving. They taught me to look at struggling people with compassion instead of judgment. They taught me that every person is carrying a story you cannot see. They shaped my career aspirations too. My work is fundamentally about prevention. It is about building systems before people fall through them. It is about creating communities where people feel seen before they feel desperate. Through education, research, and nonprofit leadership, I want to create the kinds of environments that make people believe their lives are worth staying present for. The legacy of addiction in my family did not teach me hopelessness. It taught me stewardship. It taught me that inheritance is not destiny. It taught me that cycles can be broken. Every degree I earn, every student I mentor, every program I build, every life I touch is another declaration that the story does not end where it began. I come from substance abuse. I intend to leave behind healing.

I am notorious for having an optimistic heart and really big dreams. I have always known that the creative and the critical are inseparable for me. I believe stories change people, I believe education changes people, and I believe communities change people. My academic path has been an attempt to bring all three together. I graduated from Swarthmore College, where I studied spoken word pedagogy and religion, and I am now pursuing graduate study in Community Development and Action at Vanderbilt University and Creative Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. On paper, those fields may seem unrelated, but to me they are all part of the same mission. I want to build systems that help people thrive, especially people who have been overlooked, underestimated, or pushed to the margins. I am autistic, ADHD, OCD, dyslexic, and dyscalculic, and for much of my life I existed inside systems that were never built for people like me. Instead of accepting that reality, I decided to build something better. I founded NeuroScouts, a nonprofit organization that develops educational programs for neurodivergent students. My work focuses on students who fall through the cracks, students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure. Students like the kid I was. My faith has shaped that mission in profound ways. I was raised Southern Baptist and I am an ordained minister. Some people would say this work is my calling. Some people would say it is an anointing on my life from God. All I know is that I have never been able to look away from suffering and inequity without wanting to do something about it. The church taught me that faith is not simply something you believe. It is something you practice. It is feeding people, teaching people, serving people, and building communities where everyone has dignity and belonging. Those values are at the center of everything I do. This scholarship would help me continue pursuing both graduate degrees while expanding the work I am already doing. Graduate school is a tremendous financial commitment, and I am currently balancing coursework, research, nonprofit leadership, tutoring, community programming, and educational advocacy. Financial support would allow me to devote more energy to developing NeuroScouts, conducting research, and building tools that help neurodivergent students understand themselves and thrive. My goal is to create systems-level change. I want to become a leading researcher, educator, author, and community builder focused on neurodivergent learners. I want to develop educational models that conform to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing neurodivergent brains to conform to systems built against them. I want to build something real, something big, and something profound.This scholarship would help me continue the work of creating opportunities for students who deserve to be seen, understood, and given every chance to succeed.

I treat language as a living organism, something that grows teeth and bites back, something that can be handed to someone else when they do not yet have the words for what they are feeling.Selflessness for me looks like taking what I needed and making it exist for other people. It looks like building NeuroScouts, building a system where students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure can learn in a way that actually fits their minds . It looks like refusing to wait for permission and instead making things real, emailing the superintendent myself, getting the program approved, bringing it into classrooms because the students are already there and they need something that works I have spent years sitting with students who fall through the cracks, students who are told they are too much or not enough, students who do not have the language to explain what is happening inside their own minds. I build that language with them. I teach them how to translate their internal world into something they can understand and use. I design tools that turn sensation into meaning, that turn confusion into structure, that turn overwhelm into something they can move through. When I was younger, I ran a nonprofit where I taught Black history and spoken word poetry to students from low-income backgrounds, helping them progress in their language learning and their English learning capacities, and those students are still writing, still creating, still carrying that work forward. That is what matters to me, building something that stays with someone after I am gone.NeuroScouts is that work expanded. It is a curriculum rooted in the science of neurodivergent creativity, radical joy, self-acceptance, and community organizing, a system that has already helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country . I bring it into classrooms and I watch students recognize themselves in real time, I watch them realize their brain is not wrong, their brain is different and that difference has structure and possibility. Selflessness for me is designing systems that do not require me to be present in order to help someone. It is building something that can travel, that can be used by other educators, other students, other communities. It is teaching people how to build their own systems, how to collaborate with their own minds, how to understand themselves without waiting for someone else to explain it to them.I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized, and my work is designed for students like the kid I was . Everything I build comes from that place.Selflessness is making sure the next student does not have to sit in a classroom and feel like they are three notebook lengths removed from everyone else without a map.Selflessness is building the map and handing it to them.

I LOVE THAT LIL WHITE GIRL!!! I love Sabrina Carpenter because her music feels like the exact same kind of chaos I live in, but curated, intentional, beautifully controlled, like she knows exactly what she is doing and is also letting it feel effortless at the same time. It feels like a joke and a confession and a performance and a diary entry all happening at once, which is how my brain works on a normal Tuesday. I exist in this space where I am talking about something deeply serious and then immediately pivoting into something completely different, like my dog has a boyfriend and his name is Carl and that matters to me and that belongs in the same conversation somehow . That is how I think. That is how I speak. That is how her music feels. It moves quickly, it moves playfully, it trusts that you will keep up, and if you do, you get something really layered and sharp and alive. I love Sabrina Carpenter. FULL STOP. PERIOD! Her career impacts me because she understands tone in a way that feels very precise. She knows how to be funny and cutting and soft and self-aware all at once, and she never loses control of the narrative. She performs femininity with intention, with humor, with clarity, and I watch that and recognize something familiar, the ability to hold multiple layers at once and make them feel cohesive. I literally wrote a scene in my newest book where my two main characters are dancing to her songs, just completely in it, fully alive in that moment where music becomes a shared language for everything they cannot quite say. Her music gave me a way to write intimacy that felt embodied and specific and a little chaotic in a way that still made sense. It created the emotional structure of that scene. And in my real life, every single time her music comes on, I become incredibly predictable. I hear the first few seconds and immediately say I love that lil white girl in the exact same tone every time. My friends will look at me and mimic me before I even say it because they already know it is coming. It is automatic. It is consistent. It is part of who I am at this point. What really stays with me is how intentional she is. She makes complexity feel light, she makes precision feel natural, and that is something I am always reaching for in my own work. I am constantly trying to hold humor and depth and absurdity and clarity in the same space, to build something that feels alive and layered and true all at once. Her music reminds me that voice is something you shape, something you refine, something you play with until it becomes unmistakably yours. And every time I hear it, I recognize that feeling again, that sense of control inside chaos, that sense of knowing exactly what you are doing while making it feel like you are just having fun. Also, I love that lil white girl. Always.

I was the kid who was three notebook lengths removed from other people my age, the kid sitting in the same classroom but somehow in a slightly different dimension of it, understanding everything and also understanding something else entirely at the same time, like my brain had extra tabs open that nobody else could see. I am autistic, ADHD, and OCD, which means my brain moves in constellations instead of straight lines, it loops, it echoes, it stacks thoughts on top of each other until they exist all at once, which is how I ended up describing myself as a spinning penny, always in motion, always between states, always holding multiple possibilities at once like my thoughts exist in superposition and I am constantly choosing which one collapses into speech. People noticed that early. They saw the way I talked, the way I jumped between ideas, the way I could take two completely different concepts and mash them together into something metaphorically salient, something that felt obvious to me and confusing to everyone else. I was always reaching for something just out of frame, always observing, always trying to name something that did not quite have language yet. I heard rhythm in everything, I felt meaning before I could explain it, I lived in imagery and association and pattern recognition, which made me brilliant in some ways and deeply out of sync in others. I was the gap toothed daydreamer with a sharp tongue that had been spinning stories since I could talk, the kid who could not sit still because my mind was building entire worlds out of scraps of conversation and stray facts and half remembered metaphors . ADHD meant my attention followed interest and intensity instead of instruction, autism meant I processed the world through detail and pattern and sensation, OCD meant my thoughts could lock into loops and demand resolution, and all of that together created a mind that was powerful and overwhelming and constantly in motion. So I learned how to translate.I learned how to take an internal world that is complex misunderstood and often painful and turn it into something structured, something nameable, something I could hold out in my hands and say here, this is what it feels like, this is what I mean, this is the shape of it. Poetry became that bridge, that act of collapsing the superposition into language without losing its depth. For a long time that difference felt like distance. It felt like sitting at the edge of every room, aware of everything and fully inside very little, like I was watching life through a slightly shifted lens. It felt like being deeply aware and constantly misread at the same time. And then it became the thing. That way my brain refuses to move in straight lines became my greatest tool. It made me a writer because I can see connections other people miss. It made me a teacher because I understand what it feels like to need translation and I know how to build it. It made me someone who can sit with another person’s chaos and recognize it as a pattern instead of a problem. The thing that makes me stand out is that I live in that in between space, I hold multiple truths at once, I move through the world as a spinning penny, as a mind in superposition, constantly collapsing into language, and what used to feel awkward now feels like the foundation of everything I am building.

I was born a gap-toothed daydreamer, with a mind that did not move in straight lines, it moved in constellations, in loops, in fragments that only made sense once you saw the whole pattern at once . I am autistic, ADHD, and OCD, and I do not see that as something broken to fix, I see it as another form of existence, and often a contributor to world-changing brilliance waiting to be honored and understood . Schooling was never neutral for me. It was a place where I was often three notebook lengths removed from other people my age, where I struggled to be still, where I was observing everything all at once and being told to focus on one thing at a time . I learned very early that the way I thought did not align with the way I was expected to learn, and that gap created both difficulty and possibility. I wrote poetry to have a place where the rules did not matter, where I could explain an internal world that was complex, misunderstood, and often painful, and take ownership of it, and call it by its name, to name it something beautiful. I was told I would never be able to go to college, I was told I would never live independently, and I kept writing, I kept learning, and I graduated from one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country . That path was not linear, it required building my own systems for attention, for regulation, for learning, systems that did not exist for me inside traditional education. That process became my life’s work. I became a Certified Autism Specialist, I spent over fifteen years tutoring and supporting neurodivergent students, and I founded NeuroScouts, where I design immersive, narrative-driven curricula that teach communication, executive function, and literacy as systems of play, storytelling, and self-authorship. My disability shaped my career by making it impossible for me to accept systems that exclude people like me. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them, because I know what it feels like to fall through the cracks, and I know what it feels like to be seen and thrive . My work has already reached hundreds of students, including a year-long successful program at J.T. Moore Middle School, where I have seen firsthand how transformative it is when students are given tools that actually work for their minds. Additional funds would directly support my ability to continue this work at a higher level. I am pursuing advanced education to deepen my research in neurodivergent creativity, cognition, and pedagogy, and to build a new field of education that integrates science, poetry, and lived experience. Funding would allow me to focus on my studies and research without the constant strain of financial instability, to expand NeuroScouts programming into more schools and communities, and to continue developing accessible tools and curricula for students who need them. I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change, and I will not be able to rest inside my skin until I know I have spent my life making radical and inimitable change to this society for the children . My journey through education has never been just about me, it has always been about building something that makes it easier for the next child, the one sitting in the back of the classroom with a brilliant mind and no map, to recognize themselves as capable, as intelligent, and as worthy of a future that fits them.

I am a fan of *Wicked* because it understands something fundamental about the world, that narratives are not neutral, that who gets called good and who gets called wicked is not a matter of truth but of power, of perspective, of who is telling the story and who is allowed to be heard. Because I have lived my entire life inside that question.What does it mean to be misunderstood so completely that your existence is rewritten into something unrecognizable.What does it mean to be told that the way you move through the world is wrong, too loud, too strange, too much, and to watch that misunderstanding calcify into reputation, into identity, into something that other people believe about you so deeply that it becomes more real than you are. Elphaba is not wicked. She is visible in the wrong way.And that is something I understand intimately. To be neurodivergent, to be Black, to be queer, to be a woman, to be all of these things at once, is to exist in a constant negotiation with perception, with the way people flatten you into something simpler, something easier to categorize, something that makes them more comfortable, even if it means erasing who you actually are. Wicked is a story about hermeneutical injustice before I even had the language for it, about what happens when there is no vocabulary for your experience so the world supplies one for you, and it is wrong.It is a story about the violence of misinterpretation. About how easily brilliance becomes villainy when it refuses to conform. About how systems protect themselves by rewriting dissent as danger.And more than anything, it is a story about love. About the kinds of relationships that change you, that sharpen you, that make you braver than you would have been alone. Glinda and Elphaba are not opposites, they... are mirrors, if you will. They are proof that connection can exist even across difference, even across ideology, even across the narratives that try to separate people into categories of good and evil.And I believe that so deeply.I believe that people are more complex than the roles they are assigned, that no one is reducible to the worst thing they have been called, that there is always more beneath the surface if you are willing to look. Wicked gives language to that complexity.It insists on it.It refuses the simplicity of a single story. And as someone who has spent her life trying to expand the language available to describe complex, marginalized experiences, that matters to me. Because when you change the story, you change what is possible. sometimes the villain is just the only one with guts enough to tell the bald faced truth.

Humans are built for communities. Everyone is supposed to find their community somewhere. In the earliest eras of human history, if you didn't fit in with the group, you went out in the cold, and you died. Some things change. But the anxieties don't. Relationships, romantic or otherwise, are not separate from my goals, they are the infrastructure that makes them possible, the scaffolding that holds up everything I am trying to build, the proof that the work I am doing is not happening in isolation but in communion, in call and response, in the same way rhythm is not decoration in Black music, rhythm is structure, and my relationships are that structure, they are the thing that keeps time when everything else threatens to fall apart. Because I know what it feels like to not belong, to be three notebook lengths removed from other people my age, to feel like you are speaking a language no one else understands, and I also know what it feels like to find people who do understand, people who meet you where you are, people who build something with you instead of asking you to shrink, and that changes everything, that rewrites the trajectory of your life in a way that no individual ambition ever could. My poetry partner gives me the necessary peer pressure to write every week, and that is not a small thing, that is structure, that is accountability, that is a system of care disguised as collaboration, that is someone saying your voice matters enough that I expect to hear it, and in doing so, making it easier for me to show up for my own work, to continue building the body of writing that will carry everything I am trying to say into the world. My brother is helping me build an app for my cards, and even in the way I say it, he does computer science or something im not really sure, but he says he knows how to make apps, and you know what, I believe him, because belief is a relationship too, belief is a form of trust, and trust is what allows ideas to move from concept to reality, from something I am dreaming about alone to something we are building together, something that can exist outside of me and reach other people. And my romantic relationship exists inside all of this, not as a distraction from my goals but as a site of fear and hope and future, because I am so fucking scared, scared that I fell in love on accident and now my children will never belong anywhere, scared that the things I have struggled with, identity and community and belonging, will be inherited, will be compounded, will become something I have to help them navigate, and that fear is not separate from my work, it is the reason for it, it is the thing that sharpens my commitment to building a world where they will belong, where no one will tell them they are not enough of anything. want to start a movement. I want to make something real, big, and profound. All I ever wanted was to help people like me not struggle like I had to struggle, and now I am building the systems to make that possible. My work extends beyond academics into direct community impact. I am the founder of NeuroScouts, an organization seeking to create equity in Nashville schools through c neurodivergent education. My program has already helped hundreds of students. I have always had a hunger for knowledge that my classrooms wouldn’t give me. Because when you don’t recognize your ancestors, they are just scary voices, and when you don’t recognize yourself, you become a ghost in your own life, and relationships are the thing that keep that from happening, they are the mirror that reflects you back to yourself, the archive that holds your story when you forget it, the chorus that reminds you that you are not alone. I am going to change the world no matter what, but it would be a lot harder without you. That is the role relationships play in my long term personal and professional goals, they are not optional, they are not secondary, they are the condition that makes the work sustainable, the reason it exists, and the future I am trying to build.

I am notorious for having an optimistic heart and really big dreams. I’ve always known that the creative and the critical are inseparable for me. I am the fifth Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States, a presidential scholar of the arts, and a published author with Penguin Random House. My first book, *Walking Gentry Home*, was critically acclaimed, received a starred review in Kirkus, was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award, and became an Amazon bestseller. I am also a researcher and a builder of systems. I work at Vanderbilt’s Rich Milner Research Lab, where I have developed what has been described as a groundbreaking curriculum for neurodivergent and thrice-exceptional students rooted in the science of neurodivergent creativity, radical joy, and the social model of disability. At Swarthmore College, where I graduated in 2025 with a degree in Spoken Word Pedagogy and a minor in Religion, I studied to develop a new field of education for students with ADHD, autism, and learning disabilities based on the foundations of creative writing workshops and spoken word poetry. My work extends beyond academics into direct community impact. I am the founder of NeuroScouts, an organization seeking to create equity in Nashville elementary schools through creative writing and neurodivergent education. My program has already helped hundreds of students in Davidson and Williamson County, as well as summer camps around the country, and has been approved for implementation in Metro Nashville Public Schools. I have been developing teaching programs to help other community organizers and educators learn my method and implement it around the country to fight back against the recolonization of education. My academic and artistic work has been recognized nationally and internationally. I am a two-time TEDx speaker, a Scholastic Gold Medalist, a YoungArts winner in spoken word, a Princeton Prize in Race Relations recipient, a Davidson “Youth Genius Grant” fellow, and a United States Arts Envoy. I have received the Spring Robinson Literary Prize, the Lin Arison Excellence in Writing Award, and the International Human Rights Day Rising Advocate Award, and I was nominated for Best of the Net by Rattle Magazine. My writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in publications including *The New York Times*, *The Washington Post*, *National Geographic*, *Rattle*, *The Tennessean*, and *Signal Mountain Review*. I have performed my work on CNN, CBS, TIME, and stages across the country, and I was the youngest artist to have work featured in the Parthenon Museum. In addition to my literary work, I am also an actor, winning two Best Young Actress awards at the Rome and Madrid International Film Festivals, and a designer, currently developing two board games, *Girlboss* and *Fake Your Own Death*.But more than any individual accomplishment, what defines me is my commitment to systems-level change. I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, students like the kid I was. I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change. When I want to do something, I don’t wait for permission. I make things real. I am pursuing an M.F.A in Creative Writing and an M.Ed in Community Development and Action, with plans to continue into a PhD at Vanderbilt University, where I aim to become a leading expert in neurodivergent creativity and education. My goal is to build a new educational paradigm, one that conforms to neurodivergent minds instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them.I want to start a movement. I want to make something real, big, and profound. All I ever wanted was to help people like me not struggle like I had to struggle, and now I am building the systems to make that possible.I have always had a hunger for knowledge that my classrooms wouldn’t give me. That hunger has never been passive. It has always been generative. It has pushed me to ask questions that do not yet have answers, to build frameworks where language does not yet exist, and to imagine systems that have not yet been constructed. I am not interested in simply participating in existing institutions, I am interested in transforming them. Because I know what it feels like to exist in spaces that were not built for you. And I also know what becomes possible when someone decides to build something different. My work is rooted in the belief that the neurodivergent mind has always been a site of invention, and I intend to prove it on paper and in practice. I am building for impact.And I will not be satisfied until I have spent my whole life making radical and inimitable change to this society for the children.

I always felt queer in the original sense of the word, odd, out of place. I was an alien in my family and my school. My formal education didn't teach me about the millions of girls around the world who like girls. It taught me that I was an abomination. I listened as she quoted the Bible, and at that moment I learned two new words, and two new things about myself, and I gained a burning shame. An alien to my own creator. Just being myself made people want to hurt me. Every ounce of pain I felt showed me I have to value love above everything else. Being hated has taught me that hate is a crime of ignorance. I have a brain that works in dichotomies. Depending on the subject I am either disabled or a prodigy in the psychology community they call people like me “twice exceptional.” For the longest time, I called it being broken. I’ve always known my brain was wired a little differently. It was the way I read thousands of pages without breaking a sweat but couldn't remember the order of operations. It was the way I wrote operas but I couldn't remember where I left any of the four printed copies of my paper on Italian theatre. I spent my whole life with a hunger for knowledge that my classrooms wouldn’t give me. I was always three notebook lengths removed from other people my age. In a classroom where people avoided my autism like a black death, I learned what it meant to be unseen. On what ended up being my last time setting foot in my high school, I asked that girl “why do you only ever shush me?” and she responded “its because you're the only one who's ever talking loud.” to her I was just a loud black girl. I was an alien in my family and my school. “I hate it here. And nobody wants me here. And honestly, if I never stepped foot on this building ever again I would be better off.” And honestly, I was better off. I found peace in online school, away from all the racism and bullying. I was happy for the first time. I got treatment for my mental health. I healed. I healed. When I was told I would never be able to go to college, I kept writing. When I was told I would never live independently, I kept learning. And this May, I graduated from one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. My psychiatrist told me my recovery was the closest thing she had ever seen to a miracle. She said if I could do that, there was nothing I couldn’t do. That became my truth. Being hurt for something that I couldn't truly understand made me want to fight for the system that hates me because I know it could be better. I know it can change, and there's not enough hate in this world to crush the love I have to give. I am at the same time, black and queer and nonbinary and neurodivergent and disabled and a woman and southern. The nature of my existence is being an AND instead of an OR. And through that, I started seeing connections that other people never get the chance to. Because of that, I have learned that what gets called brokenness is often brilliance waiting for the right conditions to exist. And I am NOT broken.

I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, specifically students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure. Students like the kid I was. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. I do this by combining creativity and pedagogy into a new style of grass roots education that conforms to neurodivergent brains. My work with my nonprofit is the foundation of my dream of what I can only describe as guerrilla divergent education. My program has helped hundreds of students in Davidson and Williamson County, as well as summer camps around the country, already. My nonprofit was just approved for implementation in its second metro school. I have been developing teaching programs to help other community organizers and educators learn my method and implement it around the country to fight back against the recolonization of education. I want to start a movement. The thing that is disabling to people with impairments of any kind is not their physical or mental differences, but the lack of accommodation and the presence of societal barriers that make someone disabled. The thing that makes people disabled is not their difference; it is a world that refuses to make space for them. So what I want to build is not just a program, or a nonprofit, or a business. I want to build a world that refuses to make people feel like they are the problem. I want to build a curriculum that teaches neurodivergent students how to understand their own minds, how to name their emotions, how to build lives that work for them instead of against them. I want to build tools that translate internal experiences into language, systems that make learning feel possible, and structures that allow people to exist fully as themselves. I want to build communities where neurodivergent people are not the exception but the norm, where they can grow up with a sense of identity instead of shame, where their ways of thinking are seen as valuable and necessary. Because I know what it feels like to be three notebook lengths removed from everyone else, to sit in classrooms that were not built for me, to be told in a thousand different ways that I was wrong for being who I am. All I ever wanted was to help people like me not struggle like I had to struggle. This is how I am building my future. Not by fitting into existing systems, but by creating new ones. Systems that are rooted in creativity, research, and lived experience. Systems that can grow, scale, and reach people far beyond a single classroom.I want to build something real, big, and profound.

I am notorious for having an optimistic heart and really big dreams. I’ve always known that the creative and the critical are inseparable for me. I am at the same time, black and queer and nonbinary and neurodivergent and disabled and a woman and southern. The nature of my existence is being an AND instead of an OR. The thing that is disabling to people with impairments of any kind is not their physical or mental differences, but the lack of accommodation and the presence of societal barriers that make someone disabled. The thing that makes people disabled is not their difference; it is a world that refuses to make space for them. That belief is the foundation of everything I do. I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized. I want to build systems that serve them. And I want to do it through research and through art. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure. Students like the kid I was. I have always had a hunger for knowledge that my classrooms wouldn’t give me. I was always three notebook lengths removed from other people my age. In a classroom where people avoided my autism like a black death, I learned what it meant to be unseen. Just being myself made people want to hurt me. Every ounce of pain I felt showed me I have to value love above everything else. Being hated has taught me that hate is a crime of ignorance. So I value love.To be the person I want to be, to make the changes I want to see in the world, I have to love people with different points of view, broken people, all people. Including myself. That value informs my work in mental health. I believe mental health support should not be about forcing people to “act normal.” It should be about helping people understand themselves, name their experiences, and build lives that work for them. Through poetic interoception, I teach neurodivergent people to translate their emotions through metaphor and science, turning sensations into language and understanding. Because you cannot care for yourself if you cannot understand yourself. Another one of my values is creativity as a survival tool. Poetry, for me, is prophecy. It teaches, it resists, it resurrects. Art is a measure of endurance and bravery. My business transforms the tools, systems, and research I have developed into accessible resources for neurodivergent people everywhere. It allows me to scale my impact beyond a single classroom or program and build sustainable systems that can reach people who need them most. My nonprofit has helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country, and is expanding into Metro Nashville Public Schools with the superintendent’s support. I have been developing teaching programs to help other community organizers and educators learn my method and implement it around the country. I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change. When I want to do something, I don’t wait for permission. I make things real. I want to start a movement. I want to make something real, big, and profound. All I ever wanted was to help people like me not struggle like I had to struggle, and now I’m helping thousands of people every day.

I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change. I was the youth poet laureate of the southern United States, a presidential scholar of the arts, a Princeton Prize in Race Relations winner, a Davidson Fellows Genius grand recipient, and a published author with Random House all before age 19. ( I'm currently 22) When I wanted to do research, I didn’t wait for permission. I got an internship at Vanderbilt so I could secure an IRB, and I emailed the superintendent myself. She responded, and she approved the program. That’s how I work, I make things real. I am a researcher and a builder of systems. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. I do this by combining creativity and pedagogy into a new style of grassroots education that conforms to neurodivergent brains. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, specifically students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure. Students like the kid I was. My nonprofit has helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country, and is expanding into Metro Nashville Public Schools with the superintendent’s support. I have been developing teaching programs to help other community organizers and educators learn my method and implement it around the country. I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized. I want to build systems that serve them. And I want to do it through research and through art. I am notorious for having an optimistic heart and really big dreams. I’ve always known that the creative and the critical are inseparable for me. I am at the same time, black and queer and nonbinary and neurodivergent and disabled and a woman and southern. The nature of my existence is being an AND instead of an OR. And through my unplanned foray into higher dimensions of space and time, I started seeing connections that other people never get the chance to. I have always had a hunger for knowledge that my classrooms wouldn’t give me. Just being myself made people want to hurt me. Every ounce of pain I felt showed me I have to value love above everything else. Being hated has taught me that hate is a crime of ignorance. Being hurt for something that I couldn't truly understand made me want to fight for the system that hates me because I know it could be better. I know it can change, and there's not enough hate in this world to crush the love I have to give. I want to start a movement. I want to make something real, big, and profound. Becoming not just an expert in Neurodivergent creativity, but the foremost expert, is not just something I want. It's something that burns in me, something I crave like opium, like drugs that are lost to time, like one craves to keep living. I won't be satisfied until I have spent my whole life making radical and inimitable change to this society for the children. I won't stop. I can't stop. All I ever wanted was to help people like me not struggle like I had to struggle, and now I’m helping thousands of people every day.

I am notorious for having an optimistic heart and really big dreams. I’ve always known that the creative and the critical are inseparable for me. I believe poetry fundamentally is a pedagogy, and I want to build a future where classrooms make space for all kinds of minds to thrive, especially minds like mine. I am at the same time, black and queer and nonbinary and neurodivergent and disabled and a woman and southern. The nature of my existence is being an AND instead of an OR. And through my unplanned foray into higher dimensions of space and time, I started seeing connections that other people never get the chance to. I have always had a hunger for knowledge that my classrooms wouldn’t give me. I was always three notebook lengths removed from other people my age. In a classroom where people avoided my autism like a black death, I learned what it meant to be unseen. My formal education didn't teach me about the history of my people. It didn't teach me about the millions of girls around the world who like girls. It taught me that I was an abomination. Just being myself made people want to hurt me. Every ounce of pain I felt showed me I have to value love above everything else. Being hated has taught me that hate is a crime of ignorance. When I was told I would never be able to go to college, I kept writing. When I was told I would never live independently, I kept learning. And this May, I graduated from one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. My psychiatrist told me my recovery was the closest thing she had ever seen to a miracle. She said if I could do that, there was nothing I couldn’t do. That became my truth. I am a researcher and a builder of systems. I work at Vanderbilt’s Rich Milner Research Lab, where I’ve developed a curriculum for neurodivergent and thrice-exceptional students rooted in the science of neurodivergent creativity, radical joy, and the social model of disability. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. I do this by combining creativity and pedagogy into a new style of grassroots education that conforms to neurodivergent brains. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, specifically students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure. Students like the kid I was. My nonprofit has helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country, and is expanding into Metro Nashville Public Schools with the superintendent’s support. I have been developing teaching programs to help other community organizers and educators learn my method and implement it around the country. I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change. When I wanted to do research, I didn’t wait for permission. I got an internship at Vanderbilt so I could secure an IRB, and I emailed the superintendent myself. She responded, and she approved the program. That’s how I work, I make things real. I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized. I want to build systems that serve them. And I want to do it through research and through art. All I ever wanted was to help people like me not struggle like I had to struggle, and now I’m helping thousands of people every day. I want to make something real, big, and profound.

I am notorious for having an optimistic heart and really big dreams. I’ve always known that the creative and the critical are inseparable for me. I believe poetry fundamentally is a pedagogy, and I want to build a future where language, story, and truth make space for all kinds of minds to thrive, especially minds like mine. I am at the same time, black and queer and nonbinary and neurodivergent and disabled and a woman and southern. The nature of my existence is being an AND instead of an OR. And through that, I started seeing connections that other people never get the chance to. I have always had a hunger for knowledge that my classrooms wouldn’t give me. I was always three notebook lengths removed from other people my age. In a classroom where people avoided my autism like a black death, I learned what it meant to be unseen. My formal education didn't teach me about the history of my people. It didn't teach me about the millions of girls around the world who like girls. It taught me that I was an abomination. Just being myself made people want to hurt me. Every ounce of pain I felt showed me I have to value love above everything else. Being hated has taught me that hate is a crime of ignorance. I think in poetry. My intrusive thoughts play like refrains. Words in my head jive and wop and come down like rain. Behind my eyes, I am constantly creating bridges between galaxies. Poetry, for me, is prophecy. It teaches, it resists, it resurrects. Art is a measure of endurance and bravery. Every time I have stepped into a new space, I have grown sharper, stranger, and more precise in how I tell the truth. When Bertolt Brecht said, “For art to be unpolitical is only to align itself with the ruling class,” I took that as a commandment. I write to rearrange the possible. As a journalist, I plan to use my voice to tell the stories that systems have tried to erase. I want to document the lives, cultures, and realities of people who are flattened into caricature or ignored entirely. I want to challenge the narratives that teach people to see themselves as less than, and replace them with ones that recognize complexity, humanity, and truth. I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized. I believe storytelling must be reimagined the same way. Journalism, for me, is a way to intervene in that fracture. It is a way to restore complexity, to honor lived experience, and to make visible what has been hidden. I want to write the kind of work that changes the angle of a mirror until someone who has never seen themselves reflected finally does. Because when you have never seen yourself on the page, creation becomes the first form of self-defense. Every piece I write is an act of resistance against erasure. My art is about revolution. I am a researcher and a builder of systems. I have developed work rooted in the science of neurodivergent creativity, radical joy, and the social model of disability. My work is designed for people who fall through the cracks. I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change. When I want to do something, I don’t wait for permission. I make things real. Because I know that storytelling is not neutral. It is power. And I intend to use it to make something real, big, and profound.

I have a brain that works in dichotomies. Depending on the subject I am either disabled or a prodigy in the psychology community they call people like me “twice exceptional,” both learning disabled and gifted. For the longest time, I called it being broken. I’ve always known my brain was wired a little differently. I am at the same time, black and queer and nonbinary and neurodivergent and disabled and a woman and southern. The nature of my existence is being an AND instead of an OR. And through my unplanned foray into higher dimensions of space and time, I started seeing connections that other people never get the chance to. My mental health has shaped every part of how I move through the world, how I understand people, how I build relationships, and how I imagine what is possible. I have always had a hunger for knowledge that my classrooms wouldn’t give me. I was always three notebook lengths removed from other people my age. In a classroom where people avoided my autism like a black death, I learned what it meant to be unseen. I always felt queer in the original sense of the word, odd, out of place. I was an alien in my family and my school. Just being myself made people want to hurt me. Every ounce of pain I felt showed me I have to value love above everything else. Being hated has taught me that hate is a crime of ignorance. When I was told I would never be able to go to college, I kept writing. When I was told I would never live independently, I kept learning. And this May, I graduated from one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. My psychiatrist told me my recovery was the closest thing she had ever seen to a miracle. She said if I could do that, there was nothing I couldn’t do. That became my truth. My mental health taught me that the thing that is disabling to people with impairments of any kind is not their physical or mental differences, but the lack of accommodation and the presence of societal barriers that make someone disabled. The thing that makes people disabled is not their difference; it is a world that refuses to make space for them. That understanding has shaped my goals. I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, students like the kid I was. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. My work is rooted in the science of neurodivergent creativity, radical joy, self-acceptance, creative autonomy, community organizing, and the social model of disability. My nonprofit has helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country, and is expanding into Metro Nashville Public Schools with the superintendent’s support. I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change. When I wanted to do research, I didn’t wait for permission. I made things real. My mental health has also shaped how I understand relationships. To be the person I want to be, to make the changes I want to see in the world, I have to love people with different points of view, broken people, all people. Including myself. Because being hurt for something that I couldn't truly understand made me want to fight for the system that hates me because I know it could be better. I know it can change, and there's not enough hate in this world to crush the love I have to give. I think in poetry. My intrusive thoughts play like refrains. Words in my head jive and wop and come down like rain. Behind my eyes, I am constantly creating bridges between galaxies. Poetry was the perfect avenue for me to express my neurodivergent way of thought to people who would otherwise never understand it. Every poem I write is an act of resistance against erasure. Neurotypical culture has spent centuries writing its own story as the only story. It taught me that survival is not the absence of struggle, it is persistence in spite of it. It has taught me that what gets called brokenness is often brilliance waiting for the right conditions to exist. It has taught me that difference is not deficiency, and that the systems we live in must be challenged, dismantled, and rebuilt. I am not broken. I am a magnificent amalgamation of differences and I am powerful.

I have a brain that works in dichotomies. Depending on the subject I am either disabled or a prodigy, both learning disabled and gifted. For the longest time, I called it being broken. I am at the same time, black and queer and nonbinary and neurodivergent and disabled and a woman and southern. The nature of my existence is being an AND instead of an OR. And through that, I started seeing connections that other people never get the chance to. Autism, ADHD, POTS, EDS, MCAS, OCD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, anxiety, all of it lives in my body at once. And existing in that body has impacted my education in ways that are both invisible and impossible to ignore. I have always had a hunger for knowledge that my classrooms wouldn’t give me. I was always three notebook lengths removed from other people my age. In a classroom where people avoided my autism like a black death, I learned what it meant to be unseen. There were days when my body would not cooperate, when pain or exhaustion or brain fog or sensory overload made it nearly impossible to function in the ways school demanded. When I was told I would never be able to go to college, I kept writing. When I was told I would never live independently, I kept learning. And this May, I graduated from one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. My psychiatrist told me my recovery was the closest thing she had ever seen to a miracle. She said if I could do that, there was nothing I couldn’t do. That became my truth. The thing that is disabling to people with impairments of any kind is not their physical or mental differences, but the lack of accommodation and the presence of societal barriers that make someone disabled. The thing that makes people disabled is not their difference; it is a world that refuses to make space for them. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure. Students like the kid I was. My nonprofit has helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country, and is expanding into Metro Nashville Public Schools with the superintendent’s support. I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change. When I wanted to do research, I didn’t wait for permission. I made things real. Living in a body like mine means that resilience is not a single moment, it is a practice. It is waking up every day and deciding to continue in a world that was not built for you. It is learning how to translate your own internal experience into something legible. All I ever wanted was to help people like me not struggle like I had to struggle. Receiving this scholarship would allow me to continue that work without the constant pressure of financial instability. It would give me the space to focus on building the systems, research, and tools that neurodivergent and chronically ill students need to not just survive, but thrive. I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized. I want to build systems that serve them. And I want to do it through research and through art. I am a magnificent amalgamation of differences and I am powerful.

I believe that to bring a student to a sense of their own presence is to bring them back to themselves. It is to give them the language, the structure, and the freedom to recognize that they exist fully, meaningfully, and powerfully in the world as they are. It is to undo the quiet violence of systems that have taught them that their differences are deficits, and instead help them experience their mind as a site of invention, possibility, and truth. I’ve always known that the creative and the critical are inseparable for me. I believe poetry fundamentally is a pedagogy, and I want to build a future where classrooms make space for all kinds of minds to thrive, especially minds like mine. I’m autistic, ADHD, OCD, and dyslexic, and I don’t see disability as something broken to fix. I see it as another form of existence and a contributor to brilliance waiting to be understood.The thing that is disabling to people with impairments of any kind is not their physical or mental differences, but the lack of accommodation and the presence of societal barriers that make someone disabled. The thing that makes people disabled is not their difference; it is a world that refuses to make space for them. So when I think about presence, I think about what it means to exist in a space that was not built for you and still be told to be smaller, quieter, more palatable. I think about what it means to be taught, explicitly and implicitly, that your natural way of thinking is wrong. And I think about what it means to undo that.I was born a gap-toothed daydreamer, always three notebook lengths removed from other people my age. In a classroom where people avoided my autism like a black death, I learned what it meant to be unseen. But as it always does, the expanse of empty table becomes a poem. I wrote poetry to have a place where the rules didn't matter. Poetry saved me from the age-old story of being a learning disabled student who hates school and writing. My mind didn’t work like everyone else’s. And that turned out to be a remarkable kind of thing. Poetry was the perfect avenue for me to express my neurodivergent way of thought to people who would otherwise never understand it. That is, fundementally, what presence is. It is the moment when a student realizes that their way of thinking is not actually a problem to be solved but a... language to be spoken? It is the moment when confusion is exhalted into expression. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. I do this by combining creativity and pedagogy into a new style of grassroots education that conforms to neurodivergent brains. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, specifically students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure. Students like the kid I was. To bring a student to their sense of presence, I first teach them that their brain is not broken. We are going to decolonize the construct of a neurotypical brain being the average or the ideal. We are going to tear down the lie that being neurotypical is better than being neurodivergent, and we are going to turn internalized ableism into something that celebrates neurodiversity and the way our brains work and who we are. Then we learn how to name what we feel. Through poetic interoception, students use metaphor to describe their internal states, because sometimes “anxiety” is not a word that makes sense, but “a hornet trapped in a sprite bottle” does. We use the tools of metaphor to describe emotions in such a manner that they can be communicated and understood. We build manuals to our brains. We identify how we do things so that we can succeed in life. We learn to identify when we are overstimulated, understimulated, hungry, tired, overwhelmed. We create structures that allow us to move through the world with clarity instead of confusion. We design learning environments that are modular, sensory supported, multimodal, and interest-based, because neurodivergent brains are motivated by interest, novelty, challenge, urgency, and passion. We create systems where students can start where they are, whether that is “I feel terrible right now” or “I am ready to learn,” and still move through the material in a way that honors their capacity. We celebrate hyperfixations as sites of brilliance. We turn them into cross-disciplinary research and art projects. We teach students that their obsessions are not distractions but doorways. We measure growth not by standardization, but by self-authorship. Students build portfolios that map out who they are and not just what they can do. They create manifestos, zines, and creative works that reflect their internal world. And finally, we teach them that they can change the world. That their voice matters. That their story is worth telling.I am a researcher and a builder of systems. I work at Vanderbilt’s Rich Milner Research Lab, where I’ve developed this curriculum rooted in the science of neurodivergent creativity, radical joy, and the social model of disability. My nonprofit has helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country, and is expanding into Metro Nashville Public Schools with the superintendent’s support. I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized. I want to build systems that serve them. And I want to do it through research and through art.Because presence is not just about feeling seen. It is about having the tools to see yourself. It is about understanding your mind, your body, your voice, and your place in the world. It is about recognizing that you are not an error in the system, but evidence that the system needs to change. And my mission, as a special education teacher, is to make sure that no other student here in tennesee has to wait as long as I did to realize that.

I have founded a full-scale business at neuroscouts.org selling innovative tools for neurodivergent students and adults that, with proper work and effort, will be able to pay off my student loan debt. I am extremely hardworking, passionate, and dedicated. I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change. When I wanted to do research, I didn’t wait for permission. I got an internship at Vanderbilt so I could secure an IRB, and I emailed the superintendent myself. She responded, and she approved the program. That’s how I work, I make things real. I am a researcher and a builder of systems. I work at Vanderbilt’s Rich Milner Research Lab, where I’ve developed a curriculum for neurodivergent and thrice-exceptional students rooted in the science of neurodivergent creativity, radical joy, and the social model of disability. My nonprofit has helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country, and is expanding into Metro Nashville Public Schools with the superintendent’s support. I have been developing teaching programs to help other community organizers and educators learn my method and implement it around the country. All I ever wanted was to help people like me not struggle like I had to struggle, and now I’m helping thousands of people every day. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, specifically students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure. Students like the kid I was. I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized. I want to build systems that serve them. And I want to do it through research and through art. Becoming not just an expert in this, but the foremost expert, is not just something I want. It's something that burns in me. I won't be satisfied until I have spent my whole life making radical and inimitable change to this society for the children. I won't stop. I can't stop. This is not a game to me. This is life or death for millions of children. My business is an extension of that mission. It transforms the tools, systems, and research I have developed into accessible resources for neurodivergent people everywhere. It allows me to scale my work beyond a single classroom, a single school, or a single program, and build sustainable income through meaningful impact. I am building something real, big, and profound. I don’t need permission to make the world better; I just need the education to do it right. Through my business, my research, and my teaching, I am creating a long-term, sustainable pathway to financial independence that is directly aligned with my purpose. My plan to address my student loan debt is embedded within it.

I’ve always known that the creative and the critical are inseparable for me. I believe poetry fundamentally is a pedagogy, and I want to build a future where classrooms make space for all kinds of minds to thrive, especially minds like mine. I was born a gap-toothed daydreamer, with a sharp tongue that had spun stories since I was ten months old. I was always hellbent on observing, even when the confines of my young mind made it hard to grasp the world at will. I was a CB radio on the wrong station, reaching out to something, and receiving only silence. Always three notebook lengths removed from other people my age. In a classroom where people avoided my autism like a black death, I asked my best friend, “Why does everyone crowd around the other table, leaving us with four empty chairs?” And he says, “It's because we're losers, lolo.” But as it always does, the expanse of empty table becomes a poem. My formal education didn't teach me about the millions of girls around the world who like girls. It didn't teach me about the history of my people. It taught me that I was an abomination. I listened as she quoted the Bible, and at that moment I learned two new words, and two new things about myself, and I gained a burning shame. An alien to my own creator. I always felt queer in the original sense of the word, odd, out of place. My gender identity was something I had always been uncomfortable with. I was lost and confused from middle school until my sophomore year of high school. I was an alien in my family and my school. I am at the same time, black and Queer and nonbinary and neurodivergent and disabled and a woman and southern. I am no one more than the other. I am a magnificent amalgamation of differences and I am powerful. Just being myself made people want to hurt me. Every ounce of pain I felt showed me I have to value love above everything else. Being hated has taught me that hate is a crime of ignorance. Being hurt for something that I couldn't truly understand made me want to fight for the system that hates me because I know it could be better. I know it can change, and there's not enough hate in this world to crush the love I have to give. I wrote poetry to have a place where the rules didn't matter. Where I could rhyme and meld metaphors and spin similes and nobody could tell me I was wrong. Poetry saved me from the age-old story of being a learning disabled student who hates school and writing. My mind didn’t work like everyone else’s. And that turned out to be a remarkable kind of thing. Poetry was the perfect avenue for me to express my neurodivergent way of thought to people who would otherwise never understand it. I think in rhyme, in rhythm and meter, my side tangents have stanzas, my intrusive thoughts play like refrains. I am poetry. It is my lineage. It is a righteous reclamation. It is proof of life. All I ever wanted was to help people like me not struggle like I had to struggle, and now I’m helping thousands of people every day. I am a researcher and a builder of systems. I work at Vanderbilt’s Rich Milner Research Lab, where I’ve developed a curriculum for neurodivergent and thrice-exceptional students rooted in the science of neurodivergent creativity, radical joy, and the social model of disability. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. I do this by combining creativity and pedagogy into a new style of grassroots education that conforms to neurodivergent brains. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, specifically students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure. Students like the kid I was. My nonprofit has helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country, and is expanding into Metro Nashville Public Schools with the superintendent’s support. I have been developing teaching programs to help other community organizers and educators learn my method and implement it around the country. I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change. When I wanted to do research, I didn’t wait for permission. I got an internship at Vanderbilt so I could secure an IRB, and I emailed the superintendent myself. She responded, and she approved the program. That’s how I work: I make things real. When Bertolt Brecht said, “For art to be unpolitical is only to align itself with the ruling class,” I took that as a commandment. I write to rearrange the possible. I want to write and teach the kind of poems that shift the gravitational field of this state, the kind that change the angle of a mirror until a neurodivergent, Black, queer child finally sees themselves reflected in it. Because when you have never seen yourself on the page, creation becomes the first form of self-defense. Every poem I write is an act of resistance against erasure. Neurotypical culture has spent centuries writing its own story as the only story. I am here to disrupt that narrative. My art is about revolution. I want to write the books that make future neurodivergent students feel seen before they ever have to ask. I want to build communities and schools designed with our minds in mind, places where we are not the exception but the norm, where joy and learning coexist. I don’t need permission to make the world better; I just need the education to do it right.

I am notorious for having an optimistic heart and really big dreams. I’ve always known that the creative and the critical are inseparable for me. I’m autistic, ADHD, and OCD, and I don’t see disability as something broken to fix. I see it as another form of existence, and often a contributor to world-changing brilliance waiting to be honored and understood. I have a brain that works in dichotomies. Depending on the subject I am either disabled or a prodigy, “twice exceptional,” both learning disabled and gifted. For the longest time, I called it being broken. In a classroom where people avoided my autism like a black death, I learned what it meant to be isolated. I was an alien in my family and my school. Just being myself made people want to hurt me. But perhaps these experiences should have jaded me, but now I find that I am not angry. Being hurt for something that I couldn't truly understand made me want to fight for the system that hates me because I know it could be better. I know it can change. The thing that is disabling to people with impairments of any kind is not their physical or mental differences, but the lack of accommodation and the presence of societal barriers that make someone disabled. That’s why accommodations are so vital. To be the person I want to be, to make the changes I want to see in the world, I have to love people with different points of view, broken people, all people. Including myself. Being hated has taught me that hate is a crime of ignorance. I am at the same time, black and Queer and nonbinary and neurodivergent and disabled and a woman and southern. I am a magnificent amalgamation of differences and I am powerful. Through that multiplicity, I see patterns and possibilities others can’t. I am a researcher and a builder of systems. I work at Vanderbilt’s Rich Milner Research Lab, where I’ve developed a curriculum for neurodivergent and thrice-exceptional students rooted in the science of neurodivergent creativity, radical joy, and the social model of disability. My nonprofit has helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country. I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change. When I wanted to do research, I didn’t wait for permission. I got an internship at Vanderbilt so I could secure an IRB, and I emailed the superintendent myself. She responded, and she approved the program. That’s how I work, I make things real. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, students like the kid I was. I want to build communities and schools designed with our minds in mind, places where we are not the exception but the norm, where joy and learning coexist. I don’t need permission to make the world better, I just need the education to do it right.

I still remember the day in fourth grade when my teacher read out each question and then put up on the screen who got it right and who got it wrong. On the very last question, which only one person had missed, she shared the name, and it was mine. I remember sitting there in so much shame and rage as all of my classmates and my teacher made fun of me. I cried every single time I had to go to math class for the rest of that year. My formal education didn't teach me about the millions of girls around the world who like girls. It taught me that I was an abomination. I listened as she quoted the Bible, and at that moment I learned two new words, and two new things about myself, and I gained a burning shame. An alien to my own creator. In a classroom where people avoided my autism like a black death, I asked my best friend, “Why does everyone crowd around the other table, leaving us with four empty chairs?” And he says, “It's because we're losers, lolo.” On what ended up being my last time setting foot in my high school, I asked that girl “why do you only ever shush me?” and she responded “its because you're the only one who's ever talking loud.” to her I was just a loud black girl. I was an alien in my family and my school. “I hate it here. And nobody wants me here. And honestly, if I never stepped foot on this building ever again I would be better off.” And honestly, I was better off. I found peace in online school, away from all the racism and bullying. I was happy for the first time. I got treatment for my mental health. I healed. Perhaps these experiences should have jaded me, but now I find that I am not angry. Being hurt for something that I couldn't truly understand made me want to fight for the system that hates me because I know it could be better. I know it can change, and there's not enough hate in this world to crush the love I have to give. Just being myself made people want to hurt me. Every ounce of pain I felt showed me I have to value love above everything else. Being hated has taught me that hate is a crime of ignorance. To be the person I want to be, to make the changes I want to see in the world, I have to love hateful people, to love people with different points of view, broken people, all people. Including myself. Being an alien showed me that you might belong nowhere but somewhere you will be accepted in your completeness and your oddity. You will find other people who don't belong too. And in a room where “no one is quite like you” you don’t feel so much like an alien anymore.

I was born a gap-toothed daydreamer, with a sharp tongue that had spun stories since I was ten months old. I was a CB radio on the wrong station, reaching out to something, and receiving only silence. Always three notebook lengths removed from other people my age. In a classroom where people avoided my autism like a black death, I asked my best friend, “Why does everyone crowd around the other table, leaving us with four empty chairs?” And he says, “It's because we're losers, lolo.” But as it always does, the expanse of empty table becomes a poem. My formal education didn't teach me about the millions of girls around the world who like girls. It taught me that I was an abomination. I listened as she quoted the Bible, and at that moment I learned two new words, and two new things about myself, and I gained a burning shame. An alien to my own creator. I always felt queer in the original sense of the word, odd, out of place. My gender identity was something I had always been uncomfortable with. I was lost and confused from middle school until my sophomore year of high school. I was an alien in my family and my school. I am at the same time, black and Queer and nonbinary and neurodivergent and disabled and a woman and southern. I am no one more than the other. I am a magnificent amalgamation of differences and I am powerful. Just being myself made people want to hurt me. Every ounce of pain I felt showed me I have to value love above everything else. Being hated has taught me that hate is a crime of ignorance. I wrote poetry to have a place where the rules didn't matter. Where I could rhyme and meld metaphors and spin similes and nobody could tell me I was wrong. Poetry saved me from the age-old story of being a learning disabled student who hates school and writing. My mind didn’t work like everyone else’s. And that turned out to be a remarkable kind of thing. Poetry was the perfect avenue for me to express my neurodivergent way of thought to people who would otherwise never understand it. I think in rhyme, in rhythm and meter, my side tangents have stanzas, my intrusive thoughts play like refrains. I am poetry. It is a righteous reclamation. It is proof of life. When Bertolt Brecht said, “For art to be unpolitical is only to align itself with the ruling class,” I took that as a commandment. I write to rearrange the possible. I want to write the kind of poems that shift the gravitational field of this state, the kind that change the angle of a mirror until a neurodivergent, Black, queer child finally sees themselves reflected in it. Because when you have never seen yourself on the page, creation becomes the first form of self-defense. Every poem I write is an act of resistance against erasure. Neurotypical culture has spent centuries writing its own story as the only story. I am here to disrupt that narrative. My art is about revolution.

I am notorious for having an optimistic heart and really big dreams. I’ve always known that the creative and the critical are inseparable for me. I I want to build a future where classrooms make space for all kinds of minds to thrive, especially minds like mine. I’m autistic, ADHD, and OCD, and I don’t see disability as something broken to fix. I see it as another form of existence, and often a contributor to world-changing brilliance. I have a brain that works in dichotomies. Depending on the subject I am either disabled or a prodigy in the psychology community they call people like me “twice exceptional”. Both learning disabled and gifted. For the longest time, I called it being broken. I’ve always known my brain was wired a little differently. The thing about it is, most programs for neurodivergent people are based on the biomedical model of disability, designed by neurotypical people with the intention of forcing neurodivergent people to “act normal.” My program is based on the social model of disability. The thing that is disabling to people with impairments of any kind is not their physical or mental differences, but the lack of accommodation and the presence of societal barriers that make someone disabled. That’s why accommodations are so vital. Because the changes that make life accessible for people make it more accessible for everyone. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. I do this by combining creativity and pedagogy into a new style of grassroots education that conforms to neurodivergent brains. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, specifically students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure. Students like the kid I was. My nonprofit has helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country. I have been developing teaching programs to help other community organizers and educators learn my method and implement it around the country. I want to build systems that serve them. And I want to do it through research and through art. All I ever wanted was to help people like me not struggle like I had to struggle, and now I’m helping thousands of people every day. This is not a game to me. This is life or death for millions of children. This is the difference between a lifetime of internalized ableism and self-hatred, or the pleasant lull of peace. I won’t be satisfied until I have spent my whole life making radical and inimitable change to this society for the children. I won’t stop. I can’t stop. To be the person I want to be, to make the changes I want to see in the world, I have to love people with different points of view, broken people, all people. Including myself, in all my mixed-up queer autistic disabled glory. Because all this has taught me that I'm more passionate about loving other humans than anything else in the world. I want to build communities and schools designed with our minds in mind, places where we are not the exception but the norm, where joy and learning coexist. I don’t need permission to make the world better; I just need the education to do it right.

I believe education must be reimagined to include the disabled, the divergent, and the multiply marginalized. My work is designed for students who fall through the cracks, specifically students who are gifted and anxious, autistic and brilliant, dyslexic and creative beyond measure. Students like the kid I was. I want to build systems that serve them. And I want to do it through research and through art. I am the fifth Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States, a presidential scholar of the arts, and a published author with Penguin Random House. My first book, Walking Gentry Home, was critically acclaimed and became an Amazon bestseller. But more than those things, I'm a builder of systems. I work at Vanderbilt’s Rich Milner Research Lab, where I’ve developed a curriculum for neurodivergent and thrice-exceptional students rooted in the science of neurodivergent creativity, radical joy, and the social model of disability. I design education that conforms to neurodivergent brains instead of forcing them to conform to systems built against them. At Swarthmore, I studied to develop a new field of education for students with ADHD, Autism, and Learning Disabilities based on the foundations of creative writing workshops and spoken word poetry. My nonprofit has helped hundreds of students in Tennessee and across the country, and is expanding into Metro Nashville Public Schools with the superintendent’s support. My program has helped hundreds of students in Davidson and Williamson County, as well as summer camps around the country. I have a staggering work ethic and an internal drive to make change. When I wanted to do research, I didn’t wait for permission. I got an internship at Vanderbilt so I could secure an IRB, and I emailed the superintendent myself. She responded, and she approved the program. That’s how I work: I make things real. I am notorious for having an optimistic heart and really big dreams. I’ve always known that the creative and the critical are inseparable for me. I believe poetry fundamentally is a pedagogy, and I want to build a future where classrooms make space for all kinds of minds to thrive, especially minds like mine. I’m autistic, ADHD, and OCD, and I don’t see disability as something broken to fix. I see it as another form of existence, and often a contributor to world-changing brilliance waiting to be honored and understood. My work now focuses on a few key projects. The Weather Inside teaches neurodivergent people to translate their emotions through metaphor and science, turning sensations into language and understanding. And DivergeLit365, my curriculum, reframes creativity as a form of regulation and liberation. It uses modular, sensory, dopamine-driven design to help students learn in nonlinear ways that match how their brains function. Every element is backed by science and lived experience. It denounces the notion of fitting divergent students into a system. I believe in systems-level change. I have been developing teaching programs to help other community organizers and educators learn my method and implement it around the country to fight back against the recolonization of education. I want to start a movement. I want to make something real, big, and profound. This is not a game to me. This is life or death for millions of children. This is the difference between a lifetime of internalized ableism and self-hatred, or the pleasant lull of peace. It's the difference between a goliath monster called self-hatred and the sprawling titan of invigoration we call hope. This is not a moment, it's a movement. And I will be in the classrooms, fighting this battle one scared autistic girl at a time.