I live in a house with four people, three of them women, and one income holding all of us up. One of those women is my grandmother. She has dementia, and I’m one of the three people who take care of her. Some mornings that means helping her get dressed. Some nights it means sitting with her when she doesn’t remember where she is. I come from an immigrant family, and I grew up understanding that nobody was going to hand us anything, so you learn to make every hour count. It’s why I’ve always worked, and why I take school so seriously the second time around. That’s what motivates me. I’m a Computer Science student at Virginia Commonwealth University, and this is actually my second bachelor’s degree. My first was in Interior Design. I loved it, but the part I loved most was the math under the design, the budgets and the tradeoffs, so I went back to school to study the thing I kept gravitating toward. I work two jobs while I do it, one at an afterschool program and one in portfolio risk analytics. If I could do anything with my life, I’d be in New York building risk systems for an investment firm, the tools that figure out what could go wrong with people’s money before it happens. Then I’d come home to Richmond and teach young girls how investing actually works, because nobody in my family ever got that lesson, and I want it to stop with me. What excites me about STEM is that it turns uncertainty into something you can actually measure. When you grow up in a house where one surprise bill can change the whole month, that matters to me more than I can explain. This year I built a risk engine in Python that runs up to 10,000 simulations on real market data to estimate how much a portfolio could lose on a bad day. The first time I watched all those possible futures show up on my screen as one clean distribution, I sat back and just smiled. It felt like the world finally made sense. That’s also where I think I can do the most good. Information technology now decides who gets approved for a loan, how retirement money gets invested, and how much risk a bank is willing to take. Those systems learn from data, and data remembers who was left out. I want to work in quantitative risk and model validation, the people whose job is to check whether those systems are accurate and fair before they reach families like mine. I already feel how much perspective matters. In VCU’s student investment fund I’m one of six women out of about forty analysts, and one of two Computer Science students. I notice it every single meeting. I’ve also taught math and coding to kids with CodeVA, and I’m bringing back our Financial Management Association chapter so more girls can see a way into tech and finance. My biggest challenge happened this past spring, and it’s honestly still a little hard to write about. I was working two jobs, helping care for my grandmother, and taking advanced math for the first time in years, and I failed two math classes. Because this is my second degree I don’t get a Pell Grant, and I’m almost at my federal loan limit, so failing wasn’t just embarrassing. It cost money my family doesn’t have. I also have ADHD, and for a while I let that become the explanation for everything instead of something I could plan around. So I stopped treating it like a verdict and started treating it like a problem to solve. I tracked where every hour actually went. I moved my studying to early mornings before work, because that’s when my brain is quietest. I scheduled exams around my grandmother’s care and I asked for help instead of hiding. I went to office hours even when I felt behind everyone else in the room, which for me was the hardest part. That summer I retook both classes, added Data Structures and Discrete Structures on top of them, and got an A in all four. That summer changed how I see myself. A setback is information, not an identity. My responsibilities didn’t go anywhere, but now I know how to carry them. This scholarship would let me cut hours at jobs outside my field and put that time back into school, and it would mean one less loan between me and the life I’m building for my family.

I was eleven when I found Gifted Hands by Ben Carson in a grocery store. I was supposed to be helping with the shopping, but I opened it in the aisle and couldn’t stop, and by the time my family came looking for me I was standing there crying. I’d never read anything like it. A Black boy from Detroit, called a dummy by kids in his class, raised by a mother who only went to third grade and cleaned other people’s houses, and he grows up to be one of the best surgeons in the world. I remember thinking, okay, so where you start doesn’t get to decide where you end up. The part that really got me was his mom. She turned off the TV and made her boys read two library books a week and write reports on them, and she could barely read the reports herself. She didn’t have money or connections to give them, so she gave them a habit instead. That habit took him from the bottom of his fifth grade class to Yale, then medical school, then Johns Hopkins, where he led the surgery that separated twins joined at the head. I didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me in books about big careers. That one stuck. I didn’t really understand it until years later. I finished a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design at VCU and realized what I actually loved was the thinking behind the designs, the numbers and the tradeoffs, so I went back for a second bachelor’s in Computer Science. And honestly, I started near the bottom, just like he did. I was relearning math as an adult while working two jobs and helping take care of my grandmother, who has dementia. Last spring I failed two math classes. It was humbling. So I thought about those library books and made my own rule, and this summer I retook both classes, added Data Structures and Discrete Structures, and got an A in all four. That’s the version of me that built the project linked here. It’s a risk engine I wrote in Python that runs up to 10,000 simulations on real market data to estimate how much a portfolio could lose on a bad day. I also work part time doing portfolio risk analytics at a private wealth firm, I did a quantitative analyst internship this past summer, and I’m a quant track analyst in VCU’s student investment fund, where I’m one of six women out of about forty. I also competed on a VCU team in the ICPC regional programming contest, which was terrifying and fun. The other thing the book taught me is that you’re supposed to pass it on. I’ve taught math and coding to kids with CodeVA, I help run an afterschool program in Richmond, and I’m bringing back our Financial Management Association chapter so more students like me can find their way into tech and finance without having to figure it all out alone. I’m not a surgeon. But I get what his mom understood. The right habit, done every single day, can take you a lot farther than anyone expects. That book found me in a grocery store when I was eleven, and I’m still following it.

Three afternoons a week I help run an afterschool program for kids in Richmond, and I have learned that most of service is just showing up when you said you would. The kids do not care that I have an exam the next morning or that I was up late running numbers for our student investment fund. They care whether the activity is ready, whether someone notices when they are frustrated, and whether the adult in the room keeps their word. That job has taught me patience, and it has taught me that every plan needs a backup and every idea needs to be explained a few different ways before it lands. My service started with teaching. As a STEM instructor with CodeVA, I taught math and computer science to students from kindergarten through high school, and my favorite moment was always the student who swore they were not a math person getting their first program to run. I know that feeling personally. I started college in interior design, earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts, and then came back to Virginia Commonwealth University for a second bachelor's degree in Computer Science. Rebuilding my math foundation as an adult made me a better teacher, because I remember exactly where the confusion lives. At VCU I try to build the community I wish I had found sooner. I am leading the relaunch of our Financial Management Association chapter, which had gone quiet, so that students who never pictured themselves in finance have a place to learn about investing, meet professionals, and practice for interviews together. In our student managed investment fund I am one of six women among about forty analysts and one of two Computer Science students, and I make a point of pulling newer analysts into the work instead of guarding it. I am also a member of the National Society of Black Engineers, because I want the students coming after me to see someone who looks like them in the room. Some of my service never leaves my house. I live in a multigenerational home and I am one of the people who helps care for my grandmother, which means appointments, daily routines, and covering whenever someone else's schedule changes. It will never show up on a resume, but it has shaped how I treat everyone else. When you help care for someone you love, you learn fast that dignity matters as much as the task. Looking ahead, I want to build a career in quantitative risk in New York and bring what I learn back home. My plan is specific: keep mentoring, grow our FMA chapter into something that lasts after I graduate, and eventually run free workshops that teach young women in Richmond how investing and data actually work. This scholarship would let me cut back on hours at jobs outside my field and put that time into the work that helps other people find their footing.

The first time I understood what it meant to operate at the intersection of technical precision and real consequence, I was staring at a Python model I had built to measure portfolio risk and watching it fail under stress conditions I hadn’t anticipated. I was supporting risk analytics development at an investment firm. The Monte Carlo simulation I had written was technically correct on paper. But when I stress-tested it against historical drawdown scenarios, the outputs were misleading in ways invisible to someone without the statistical intuition to catch them. I caught it. I rebuilt it. That moment answered something I had been curious about since I first picked up Python: in quantitative finance, the gap between “technically correct” and “actually right” can cost millions, and the people who close that gap are exactly the ones this industry is still missing. I am one of six women in VCU’s Student Managed Investment Portfolio out of 40 analysts and the only woman from Computer Science. I did not fully appreciate what that meant until I walked into my first team meeting and looked around the room. I was not surprised. I had been in rooms like that before. But I made a quiet decision to be someone who stays, who builds, and who makes it easier for the next woman to walk in. I grew up in a multigenerational household, three quarters women, low income, the kind of home where you figure things out yourself or they don’t get figured out. I am the first in my family on this path. Every dollar that doesn’t go toward tuition is time and headspace I get back to do the work that will determine where I go from here. That work extends beyond my own advancement. I have spent years teaching math and computer science through CodeVA and now as a mathematics and statistics tutor. I volunteered with NSBE at VCU to bring hands-on STEM programming to middle schoolers at STEM Fest. I served as an undergraduate research assistant in VCU’s Data Science Lab supporting work that benefited underrepresented communities, including the Virginia Twin Registry. I mentor CS students earlier in their programs the way I wish someone had mentored me. This scholarship would let me step further into technical leadership and build the presence that changes what a young woman thinks is possible. I also hold a prior B.F.A. in Interior Design. I use it as an asset. Design thinking taught me to ask what a model is actually communicating before accepting what it outputs. Choosing to start over, financially and academically, was not a small decision. It was the right one. I chose this field because the models built here shape capital allocation, risk exposure, and economic outcomes at scale. I want to build them well. I want to be visible doing it. And I want the girl sitting in a classroom in Richmond right now, the one who is good at math and doesn’t see anyone who looks like her in the rooms where that math gets used, to know that those rooms are hers too.

The moment I decided to study computer science, I was staring at a budget spreadsheet, not a line of code. I was finishing my degree in Interior Design and serving as treasurer of our ASID chapter, where I managed about $5,000 a year and helped grow revenue by roughly 20 percent. Later I was student lead for VCU's first team in the Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. Every big decision came down to data: what it costs, what can go wrong, how likely it is. I realized I did not want to only work inside other people's models. I wanted to build them. So I went back for a second bachelor's degree, this time in Computer Science with a Data Science concentration at Virginia Commonwealth University. My dream job is quantitative risk at a buy side investment firm in New York. I want to build the systems that tell a portfolio manager what could go wrong before it does. I have already started. I built a Capital Allocation Risk Engine in Python that uses bootstrapped Monte Carlo simulation to compute Value at Risk, Conditional Value at Risk, and drawdown, and I analyze client portfolios as a Portfolio Risk Analytics Intern at Main Street Private Advisors. I also sit on VCU's Student Managed Investment Portfolio covering banks and insurers. Why me? Because, like Chris, I know what it costs to earn this degree. I am a first generation student from an immigrant household that runs on my mother's nursing salary. I work while studying and help care for my grandmother, who has dementia. This past spring I failed two math courses in a single semester. I did not hide from it. I retook Calculus II and Linear Algebra at community college over the summer, added Data Structures and Discrete Structures, and earned an A in all four. I also try to live the part of Chris's story his family wrote about first: being fully present for people. As an Afterschool Program Coordinator with Richmond Parks and Recreation, my job is to give kids my full attention. At VCU, I am relaunching the Financial Management Association so students who work through school like me have someone asking how they can help. This scholarship would buy back time I currently spend working by the hour, and I would spend it the way Chris did: building something real and pulling others up with me.

Even The table rocked the moment Dara set her coffee down a small click against the tile that, as far as she could tell, only she could hear. Everyone else in the café had made peace with it. The man across the aisle balanced his laptop, his lunch, and apparently his whole nervous system on three legs and a prayer. Dara could not. She folded a napkin into eighths and slid it under the short leg. The table tipped the other way. Now a different leg was short. This is the thing nobody tells you about wobbly tables: there is no short leg. There is only a floor that has quietly stopped being flat, and four legs negotiating badly with it. She got down on the tile actually down, cheek near the grout, while the barista pretended not to watch and sighted along the base until she found it. Not a short leg at all. A high one, an eighth of an inch too proud, lifting its diagonal partner off the ground every time someone breathed near it. The napkin was wrong. The napkin was always wrong; paper compresses, then you're back where you started, just with worse posture. She needed something that wouldn't give. The sugar packet flattened to nothing. The coffee stirrer snapped. A folded receipt held for exactly as long as it took her to feel proud, then surrendered. Around her, people came and went, untroubled, ordering oat lattes on top of a structural failure. Dara understood how she looked. A grown woman conducting a forensic investigation into a café table while her coffee went cold. Trivial. She'd have said so too, about anyone else. But there's a specific, private itch in being the only person who notices a thing is wrong and could be right. It's not about the table. It's about the eighth of an inch the knowledge that the gap is measurable, which means it's closeable, which means walking away is a choice and not an accident. The fix, when it came, was a wine cork someone had left on the windowsill, trimmed with her keys into a wedge so thin it was almost an idea. She seated it under the proud leg and pressed. Set her elbows on the surface. Leaned her full weight in. Nothing. No click. The table met the floor on all four points at once, like it had been waiting years for someone to bother. She sat back down and drank her coffee, which was terrible now, cold and over-sweet from the sacrificed packet. Worth it. She stayed another twenty minutes, then packed up and left the fixed table for whoever came next. A teenager took it without looking. Set down a milkshake, opened a textbook, never felt the ground shift, because it didn't. He would never know it had ever been otherwise — which was, Dara thought on her way out, the entire point of doing it. The best repairs are the ones nobody feels. You just get to sit at a table that holds.

Building Tomorrow’s World with Data and Purpose When I first started learning how to code, I didn’t see it as a path to a career, I saw it as a way to create change. I was fascinated by how technology connects people, how something written in a few lines of code could make life easier or solve a problem that once felt impossible. As a Black woman in computer science, I’ve learned that STEM is more than algorithms and machines, it’s about the impact those tools can make on people’s lives. My journey has been about learning to use data not just to predict outcomes, but to make a difference for overlooked communities. I’m pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a concentration in Data Science and minors in Statistics and Finance at Virginia Commonwealth University. Every class reminds me that the future belongs to those who understand both numbers and people. For me, STEM isn’t about prestige, it’s about purpose. I want to use data to make the world fairer, giving communities like mine a voice in decisions that shape our environment and economy. I believe data can be a form of advocacy and a bridge toward more inclusive decision making. One of the most meaningful experiences of my college journey was serving as Student Lead for the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. Our challenge was to design a net-zero, affordable housing project for low-income families in Richmond, Virginia. I was one of the youngest on the team and one of the only Black women, but I quickly learned that leadership isn’t about being the loudest voice in the room, it’s about listening, learning, and helping others see how their work connects to something bigger. Late nights of collaboration taught me that technology and empathy must work together. When we presented our design, I felt pride not just in what we built, but in why we built it, to create sustainable housing rooted in compassion and equity. As a Data Science and Machine Learning Undergraduate Assistant, I’ve analyzed climate and social data to identify communities most vulnerable to environmental risks. I’ve seen how data can tell stories that inspire change, from modeling natural disasters to mapping underserved regions. My technical work in Python, R, and statistical modeling gives me the tools to solve problems, but my heart for service gives me the reason to solve them. Outside the lab, I mentor women and students of color through VCU’s STEM mentorship program. I know what it feels like to question whether you belong in a space not built for you. Helping a student understand a concept or finish her first project reminds me why representation matters, it changes what people believe is possible. Each time I see someone’s confidence grow, I’m reminded that progress begins when we lift each other up. Looking ahead, I hope to merge my love for data and finance to design solutions for sustainable investing and community resilience. I want to help organizations make responsible financial decisions that benefit both people and the planet. My dream is to become a quantitative analyst and technology leader who measures progress not just in profit, but in purpose. The Women in STEM Scholarship would mean more than financial support, it would affirm the values guiding my journey: resilience, empathy, and innovation. I believe the future of STEM belongs to women who build with both intelligence and heart. I hope to keep paving that path so one day another young girl can look at me and think, “If she can do it, maybe I can too."