My plan is simple to say and hard to do. I want to work in private wealth management, build real expertise managing money for families, and eventually start my own practice focused on the people who usually get ignored by that industry. Immigrant families. First generation families. People who work incredibly hard and have never had anyone sit across from them and explain how to make their money work for them instead of just surviving paycheck to paycheck. That plan did not come out of nowhere. My dad came from Peru, built a martial arts school there, lost everything when the government seized it, and started completely over in Las Vegas in a language he was still learning. He rebuilt Thunder Kids Taekwondo into two locations and hundreds of students through pure stubbornness and work ethic. But when our landlord nearly doubled the rent after COVID, he did not have an advisor or anyone to call. He had me, a teenager teaching myself financial analysis because I refused to watch him face that alone. That is the moment I understood the real problem. It is not that families like mine lack ambition. My dad has more of that than anyone I know. The problem is access. Nobody had ever sat down with him and explained how any of it worked. So I started trying to be that person. In high school I founded Rock Solid Investing and grew our investment club from 5 students to over 40. Most of them were first generation kids like me. I also volunteered with VITA preparing tax returns, where I once found $800 in missed deductions for a woman from Peru who cried quietly when she realized what that meant for her son's school supplies. That is the version of finance I want to spend my life doing. Not abstract. Not theoretical. Just sitting with someone and actually helping. Right now I am a freshman at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, the first in my family to attend a school like this. I am studying finance with my sights set on wealth management internships over the next two summers, building the technical skills I will need while staying close to why I started caring about any of this in the first place. This scholarship would help me keep doing that without the constant background noise of financial stress pulling my attention away from building toward that goal. Being first generation means there is no safety net waiting if something goes wrong, no family savings to fall back on, no one who has done this before to ask for a loan. Every dollar that does not have to go toward tuition or textbooks is a dollar of mental space I get back to actually focus on becoming someone who can change that story for the next family like mine. I am not trying to build wealth just for myself. I am trying to build the kind of career where helping families like my own becomes the whole point. This scholarship is one more piece that gets me there.

My dad came from Peru with nothing. He had built a martial arts school there, trained champions, poured his life into it. Then the government seized everything. He started over in a country where he didn't speak the language, working with his hands, building something new from scratch. That something became Thunder Kids Taekwondo in Las Vegas, a school where my brother, my mom, and I all taught alongside him. I grew up watching my dad outwork everyone in the room. What I didn't understand until later was how much he was navigating alone. When our landlord doubled the rent after COVID, he didn't have advisors. He didn't have anyone to sit down with him and explain his options. He had me, a teenager who started teaching himself financial analysis because I couldn't stand watching him face those decisions without support. That's the thing about first generation immigrant families. It's not a lack of work ethic. It's a lack of access. My dad had more drive than anyone I've ever met. What he didn't have was a system built to help him. Being Mexican American and first generation means I grew up in that gap. I saw what it costs when financial literacy, professional networks, and institutional knowledge skip your family entirely. And I decided early that I wasn't going to just pass through that gap. I was going to do something about it. In high school I founded Rock Solid Investing, a bilingual financial literacy initiative, and built our investment club from 5 members to over 40. Most of those students came from families like mine. I remember one member pulling me aside after a meeting, frustrated, saying he still didn't know how to pay for textbooks without wrecking his credit while the rest of us talked about index funds. That stopped me cold. I restructured everything. We started over with the basics, credit, APR, emergency funds, the foundation that nobody had ever laid for us. Watching that student go from overwhelmed to in control, and eventually passing the club leadership to him, that was the moment I understood what this work actually meant. I also spent years teaching taekwondo at Thunder Kids, mostly to kids from immigrant and underserved families. A black belt isn't just a rank. It's proof that you showed up, over and over, in a space that asked something real of you. I tried to be that presence for those kids the same way my dad was for me. Now I'm a first generation student at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. I think about José Melendez often, a man who worked as a janitor and made sure eleven children graduated from college. My dad didn't finish his education in Peru before losing everything. He rebuilt anyway. These stories are not so different. They are about people who understood, without anyone telling them, that education was the thing worth fighting for. I'm passionate about being a first generation Mexican American college student because I know exactly what it cost the people before me. I don't take that lightly. And I don't plan to be the last one through the door.

When my dad opened Thunder Kids Taekwondo in Las Vegas, he didn't know how American business taxes worked. He came from Peru, built a taekwondo academy there, lost everything to government seizure, and started over from nothing in a country where he didn't speak the language. He rebuilt it. Two locations, hundreds of students, a family business we all poured ourselves into. Then our landlord doubled the rent post COVID. My dad didn't have advisors. He had me, a sixteen year old teaching himself financial analysis, trying to figure out how to help him survive. That moment is why I care about this the way I do. The problem was never ambition. My dad had more of that than anyone I've ever met. The problem was access. Access to information, to capital, to someone who would sit down and explain how the game worked. Nobody did that for him. I've spent the years since trying to be that person for others. In high school I founded Rock Solid Investing and built our investment club from 5 members to over 40. Most of those students had parents like mine. One of our early members pulled me aside after a meeting and said he still didn't understand how to pay for textbooks without destroying his credit score due to late payments, while the rest of us were talking about index funds. That stopped me cold. I had been exactly where he was. I completely restructured what we were doing, starting over with credit basics, APR, emergency funds, the foundation that nobody had ever laid for us. Watching that same student go from overwhelmed to actually in control of his finances, and eventually passing the club presidency to him because he asked better questions than anyone in the room, that's the moment that made everything real for me. I also grew up on the mat. My brother Jose and I both hold black belts and spent years teaching at Thunder Kids alongside my parents. On the surface you're teaching kicks. What you're actually doing is standing in front of a kid from an immigrant family and showing them, over and over, that they belong in spaces they've been told aren't built for them. That lesson translates everywhere. I'm now a Sophmore at Emory's Goizueta Business School, the first in my family at a school like this. I'm VP of Finance on the College Council overseeing a $525,000 budget, and I'm continuing to build Rock Solid Investing as a bilingual platform specifically for first generation students and the families behind them. Spanish is not an afterthought for me. It's how my dad thinks about money. It's how a lot of our community processes these ideas for the first time. First generation students don't need to be told to work hard. They already know how. What they need is someone who came from where they came from, who made it through, standing at the door saying: you are supposed to be here. That's what drives me. Not just to succeed, but to turn around and pull the next person through with me.