Nature gives me a sense of awe at the beauty of our world. I love the gorgeous shifting colours of a sunset, the endless ocean, the sunlight shining through the leaves of a tree. We are nature, and nature is part of us, locked inextricably together. Climate change is important to me because it’s universal—we are all affected by rising tides. For me, it’s easy to feel powerless against the huge force of climate change, but speaking out, marching, and spreading awareness about this threat makes such a big difference. Many people don’t know about or just don’t recognise the dangers of global warming to our planet—so for me, it’s been really important to speak up about the environment and engage others in sustainability. As a competitive debater, I try to raise awareness about the planet through my public speaking, both nationally and internationally as a member of Team England when I debate about environmental issues. I do a lot of writing about the planet, particularly writing poetry, to both process my feelings about climate change and emphasise the importance of saving our planet. And I also advocate for involving others in speaking out to protect our planet, through teaching public speaking skills to young public school students. In my own life, I’ve tried to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Instead of disposing of plastic waste, I use and reuse water bottles, bags, and anything I can reuse to prevent waste, try to thrift clothing and not participate in the fast fashion industry, and in my diet, I’ve reduced my meat consumption to help our planet. The beauty of the natural world inspires me to do my part in saving our planet, and I hope anyone who reads my writing or listens to me feels inspired to do the same.

Nature gives me a sense of awe at the beauty of our world. I love the gorgeous shifting colours of a sunset, the endless ocean, the sunlight shining through the leaves of a tree. We are nature, and nature is part of us, locked inextricably together. Climate change is important to me because it’s universal—we are all affected by rising tides. For me, it’s easy to feel powerless against the huge force of climate change, but speaking out, marching, and spreading awareness about this threat makes such a big difference. Many people don’t know about or just don’t recognise the dangers of global warming to our planet—so for me, it’s been really important to speak up about the environment and engage others in sustainability. As a competitive debater, I try to raise awareness about the planet through my public speaking, both nationally and internationally as a member of Team England when I debate about environmental issues. I do a lot of writing about the planet, particularly writing poetry, to both process my feelings about climate change and emphasise the importance of saving our planet. And I also advocate for involving others in speaking out to protect our planet, through teaching public speaking skills to young public school students. In my own life, I’ve tried to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Instead of disposing of plastic waste, I use and reuse water bottles, bags, and anything I can reuse to prevent waste, try to thrift clothing and not participate in the fast fashion industry, and in my diet, I’ve reduced my meat consumption to help our planet. The beauty of the natural world inspires me to do my part in saving our planet, and I hope anyone who reads my writing or listens to me feels inspired to do the same.

I don’t have a middle name, but I am the middle of five children, and perhaps coincidentally, my interests have always fallen ‘in the middle’, at the intersection between social activism and technology. Never content to be confined academically, I plan to major in Computer Science with a minor in Public Policy next year at Stanford University where I have been accepted. My interest in social justice was first sparked by debate, one of my main extracurricular activities. Debating helped me understand complex policy issues, refine my opinions, and gain confidence. Last year, I was the youngest of the five members selected for Team England 2021 for debating (as I am a dual UK/US citizen). I also founded Start Speaking, a program teaching public speaking to students at local public schools without debate resources, and organised a tournament for young, female debaters. I’ve found it very rewarding to help other young people find their voices through debate and emerge stronger and more confident. I’m passionate about promoting diverse voices. An active member of my school’s LGBTQ+ society, I advocate for greater inclusivity in the curriculum and founded a Queer Literature Society at my school. My poems, which address gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, and our environment, have been published in the oldest literary UK periodical, the London Magazine, and won awards from Young Poets Network and Ocean Bow among others. I also review scripts for theatre companies to encourage more inclusive productions and attract diverse audiences. Programming is the ultimate form of self-expression for me. Code is language in which I can develop solutions to help others. Having been an avid programmer for seven years, I was a top 10 finalist in the 2019 British Programming Challenge and was awarded the Arkwright Engineering scholarship for a machine learning program that reads aloud handwriting for visually impaired people. My experiences during the pandemic set Computer Science as my future career path. Under lockdown, the empty streets made me feel unsafe travelling alone. I soon realised that it wasn’t just me, and that fear on the streets is widespread amongst vulnerable groups including people of colour and the transgender community. After conducting a survey of 194 young women, which revealed 86% felt unsafe frequently when travelling, I organized a school team to develop a transport safety app and reached out to women’s and LGBTQ+ groups for feedback, structuring the features we developed around their needs. Our prototype app was selected as a Finalist for the Longitude Explorer Prize, a year-long social impact tech challenge. Working on this project showed me how many common, crucial issues go unnoticed—and how important it is to address them with the involvement of those most affected by them. I am looking forward to studying Computer Science and Public Policy next year at Stanford, and once again, using programming as a way to address social justice and create ethically-centered technologies. I don’t think it is a coincidence that women are underrepresented in this industry and at the same time, social media has developed in a way that has been incredibly detrimental to young women and their mental health. I’m proud to be a female voice in computer science, and am passionate about speaking up about the needs of those ignored by mainstream technology. I also hope to advocate for regulation of the big tech industry to create a fairer, more positive and more inclusive world.

For me, making a difference through mentorship is about using what I've learned in my life to try and create a better one for others. Debating has been a deeply impactful activity in my life for the last four years, helping me develop confidence, express my own views, and learn how to communicate with others. But what made it so powerful was the older debaters who mentored me, and helped me feel like my opinions mattered. I hope to pass that on through mentoring other young women. For the last three years, I have run the Junior Debating club at my school, teaching public speaking skills, judging debates, and acting as a mentor for younger debaters. Extremely privileged to attend a private school with resources to support debate, last year I decided to work to make debating accessible to my broader community. I founded a debate program, Start Speaking, to support students at public schools without the same resources to learn public speaking. I created a debate curriculum, reached out to local schools, and persuaded a teacher to supervise our sessions on Zoom for safeguarding purposes. For the last two years, I have run weekly sessions teaching debate skills and judging debates for public school students in 6th-8th grade. This year, I also organised the St Paul’s Women’s Open debate tournament as a welcoming competition judged and organised entirely by women, for young female and nonbinary novice debaters. I hope I can be a friendly face to reach out to, and a mentor who they can rely on for advice and support in the often intimidating, male-dominated sphere of public speaking. It’s been rewarding to see my mentees become more self-assured over the course of our program, which I hope will cross over into their lives beyond debate.

I try to use my own experiences to advocate for social justice. For me, making a difference is about using what I've learned in my life to try and create a better one for others. Debating has been a deeply impactful activity in my life for the last four years, helping me develop confidence, express my own views, and learn how to communicate with others. For the last three years, I have run the Junior Debating club at my school, teaching public speaking skills, judging debates, and acting as a mentor for younger debaters. Extremely privileged to attend a private school with resources to support debate, last year I decided to work to make debating accessible to my broader community. I founded a debate program, Start Speaking, to support students at public schools without the same resources to learn public speaking. I created a debate curriculum, reached out to local schools, and persuaded a teacher to supervise our sessions on Zoom for safeguarding purposes. For the last two years, I have run weekly sessions teaching debate skills and judging debates for public school students in 6th-8th grade. It’s been rewarding to see my mentees become more self-assured over the course of our program, which I hope will cross over into their lives beyond debate. This year, I also organised the St Paul’s Women’s Open debate tournament as a welcoming competition judged and organised entirely by women, for young female and nonbinary novice debaters. Just as I have found my voice through debating, I’m deeply committed to reaching out to the many other young people who can benefit from being heard.

For me, what makes life meaningful is helping others. I've always been passionate about social justice and activism, whether for LGBTQIA+ rights, the environment, or gender equality. I care deeply about the power of the human voice to speak up against injustice, which I try to highlight in my writing. I was commended in the Young Poets 10 Year Anniversary challenge for a poem about queer representation in literature and won a Pearl Award in the Ocean Bow Ocean Awareness competition for raising awareness about climate change through my poetry. I also work reviewing scripts for the Trafalgar and Almeida theatre companies to attract more young and diverse audiences. My own experiences inform the problems I identify and try to address. For me, making a difference is about using what I've learned in my life to try and create a better one for others. Debating has been a deeply impactful activity in my life for the last four years, helping me develop confidence, express my own views, and learn how to communicate with others. For the last three years, I have run the Junior Debating club at my school, teaching public speaking skills, judging debates, and acting as a mentor for younger debaters. Extremely privileged to attend a private school with resources to support debate, last year I decided to work to make debating accessible to my broader community. I founded a debate program, Start Speaking, to support students at public schools without the same resources to learn public speaking. I created a debate curriculum, reached out to local schools, and persuaded a teacher to supervise our sessions on Zoom for safeguarding purposes. For the last two years, I have run weekly sessions teaching debate skills and judging debates for public school students in 6th-8th grade. It’s been rewarding to see my mentees become more self-assured over the course of our program, which I hope will cross over into their lives beyond debate. This year, I also organised the St Paul’s Women’s Open debate tournament as a welcoming competition judged and organised entirely by women, for young female and nonbinary novice debaters. Just as I have found my voice through debating, I’m deeply committed to reaching out to the many other young people who can benefit from being heard. Similarly, my experiences during lockdown brought me to another social action project. The empty streets made me feel unsafe travelling alone. The experience brought home to me that fear on the streets was widespread among vulnerable groups including people of colour and the transgender community. I surveyed 194 young women on their perception of risk on public transportation: 86% reported feeling unsafe frequently, many reporting incidences of catcalling and assault. I organized a school team to develop a transport safety app and reached out to women’s and LGBTQIA + groups for feedback, structuring the features we developed around their needs, and beta testing developments with them. Our prototype app offers safer travel routes and check-in mechanisms with trusted people, and our team was selected as a finalist for the Longitude Explorer Prize, a yearlong social impact tech challenge. Working on this project taught me that our own experiences can help us uncover common, yet crucial issues which would otherwise go unnoticed, and the importance of developing solutions in consultation with those most affected. In the future, pursuing an English and Computer Science double-major degree, I hope to use the skills I learn to create more social impact initiatives. The determination and passion social action has taught me have been lifelong lessons in how helping others is meaningful and achievable through perseverance.

Poetry is my passion. Writing it, reading it, listening to spoken word—every kind! Poetry for me is a way to capture a moment in time in words. I love poems that give me perfect little fragments of the everyday: short, beautiful lines of verse like Pound’s ‘In A Station of the Metro’. I’ve spent hours searching for the perfect rhyme—words that click together beautifully without losing their meaning. Poems turn words into music. My iPhone Notes app is cluttered with about a thousand poetic fragments of my ideas and perceptions of life over the past 8 or so years. Unintentionally, my poetry creates a timeline for my life and helps me remember things I’ve done and experienced. I look back at these fragments and relive moments that I no longer remember other than from the words I have written about them. Sometimes I return to old poems after years away from them and rework them, finishing a project I forgot I had even begun. Reflecting on my family and community makes me appreciate them more. Sometimes parts of life are just beautiful and all you can do is try to capture them in words, although you will always fail to capture that feeling exactly. But the practice of trying to capture moments in words is endlessly fascinating. I sometimes enter my poetry into competitions and for publication, but the real purpose of writing poetry has never been for others. It’s just been to spend a moment with myself.