It did not start with a class. It started with a problem I could not stop thinking about. I grew up in Uganda, where my parents are missionaries. Resources were scarce in ways that shaped how I think about everything, including technology. When I got to high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I had already been tinkering with devices long enough to know that the gap between people who understand technology and people who only use it is one of the most consequential gaps there is. I wanted to be on the right side of that gap, and I wanted to help others get there, too. A STEM internship with PartnerTulsa reinforced it. I got to teach drone flight to young people in the community. Watching a kid fly something they built for the first time, watching them realize they are capable of more than they thought, is hard to describe. I want to build a technology company that actually serves the communities that are most often overlooked by the industry. I already run Salem Innovation Solutions, a tech services company I founded to help local businesses, schools, nonprofits, and churches access tools they would otherwise be unable to afford. Most of my clients are not companies with IT budgets. They are a small restaurant owner who needs a website, a ministry that needs its operations streamlined, and a school that wants AI tools but has no idea where to start. I have learned more from those clients than from any course I have taken. I read about Chris Jackson before writing this. What struck me was not just how accomplished he was, but how he carried it. He gave people his full attention. He asked how he could help. He built a career in technology without losing sight of the people around him. That is a harder thing to hold onto than it sounds, especially in an industry that tends to reward moving fast over being present. What also stood out was that he struggled to afford his degree. He did not come from a position of ease and coast through. He built something real from a position of constraint, and that experience shaped the kind of person and professional he became. I recognize that story. I cover my own living expenses as a student. I do not have a financial safety net. Every semester involves real decisions about what I can and cannot afford. That pressure has made me more resourceful and more focused. I am not the candidate with the highest GPA in this pool. I cannot claim that. What I can say is that I am already doing the work. I am building a company, serving my church, completing my degree, and trying to leave every environment I enter a little better than I found it. This scholarship would not change my direction. It would clear some of the friction that makes the current pace harder to sustain.

My first semester at Oral Roberts University, I almost left. I had come from Uganda on an F-1 visa to study Information Systems and Technology. My family had converted savings for years to make the tuition possible. My father's logistics business, my mother's careful management of every shilling -- all of it had pointed toward this one departure. I landed in Tulsa with a suitcase and a plan that turned out to be far less detailed than I needed. Within the first two months, the financial reality became clear in ways I had not fully understood before arriving. No federal aid. No work authorization off-campus. My family's monthly transfers were stretched tight against the exchange rate. I was building two small companies to generate income, but the work was early-stage and the returns were slow. I was exhausted, behind on sleep, and starting to wonder whether staying made sense. That was the obstacle. But the harder part was the silence of it. I did not want to tell my parents how close to the edge things were, because I knew what their response would cost them. I did not want to tell friends, because I was the one who had left everything to be here and it felt like failing to admit I was struggling. What I did instead was pray. Not asking to be removed from the difficulty. I had been taught, and I believed, that difficulty was where character was built. What I prayed for was clarity. The ability to see what was actually there instead of what I feared was there. The patience to stay present in a moment that felt impossible without being consumed by it. Over the next few weeks, something in me steadied. Not because the finances improved immediately -- they did not. But because I stopped treating the difficulty as a sign that I had made a wrong choice. I started working with more focus and less panic. I reached out to a financial aid counselor. I applied for scholarships I had been too overwhelmed to research. I told one friend the truth. She helped me find two campus resources I did not know existed. My faith did not resolve the situation for me. What it did was prevent me from collapsing inward at the moment I most needed to stay functional. It gave me a framework for understanding hardship that did not require the hardship to go away immediately. I could keep working toward something without demanding it arrive on schedule. I stayed. I am still here, maintaining a 3.5 GPA, running two companies, and building toward goals that require more patience than I originally thought I had. Nabi Nicole counseled others through their challenges and pointed them toward something larger than those challenges. That is exactly what faith did for me in that first semester. It gave me a direction to face that was bigger than my fear.

The performance I keep coming back to is "All Too Well" at the 2021 SNL 50 performance. Not a stadium. Not a spectacle. Just Taylor Swift at a piano, ten minutes of a story that did not flinch. I first heard it the way most people outside the US heard it -- through the noise online about the ten-minute version dropping. I was not a longtime Swiftie before that. I had heard the hits, the radio songs. But I watched that performance late at night in my dorm room at Oral Roberts University, freshman year, and something in it stayed with me. The song is about being made to feel small. About someone older and more powerful deciding that what happened between you was not significant, and you having to carry the memory of it while they moved on. There is a line about standing there in a nice dress, being told you were too young for something you already understood. That feeling is not only about relationships. I came to the US at 18 on an F-1 visa. No federal aid, no work authorization off-campus, a family converting shillings to dollars to keep me here. There were moments in that first year when I felt like I was being told I was too young, too foreign, too much of an edge case for the systems I was trying to operate in. Scholarship applications that stopped at citizenship questions. Internship postings that required work authorization. I kept the memory of why I came, even when the structures around me did not seem to care. What struck me in that performance was the absence of drama about it. Swift sang the whole ten minutes without making it a performance of pain. She just told the story. She stayed in it. That precision -- not overstating, not undercutting -- is something I try to bring to my own work. I build technology. Clarity matters. She has built one of the longest careers in modern music by staying specific. Not by being universal, but by being exact. That approach makes her work translatable across contexts, including mine. That is why "All Too Well" on that stage is the performance I keep returning to. It is not the biggest moment in her career. It might be the most honest one.

I heard "Espresso" for the first time on a campus speaker in the ORU student center. I had never listened to Sabrina Carpenter before. I was deep into a debug session on my laptop, half-focused, and then that opening synth hit and I stopped typing. That was freshman year. I had been in the United States for about six weeks and was still adjusting to everything -- the food, the pace, the way people talked. Music was one of the faster entry points. I started paying attention to Sabrina Carpenter after that, and what I noticed was how confident she sounded. Not in a performed way. In a way that felt like she had decided something about herself and was not going back. I grew up in Uganda where that kind of public self-assurance is not always encouraged, especially in young people. You respect your elders, you defer, you keep your ambitions measured. Coming to the US at 18 to build something, with no safety net, carrying a family's financial sacrifice on my back, I had to relearn what it meant to believe in myself out loud. Short n' Sweet came out sophomore year and I listened to the whole album in one sitting. There is a specific quality in how Carpenter writes about wanting things. She does not apologize for it. She is not performing humility about her ambitions. She knows what she wants and she is clear about it, even in songs about heartbreak. That directness changed something for me. I run two companies while maintaining a 3.5 GPA. There are weeks where I feel like I am asking for too much from myself and from the people I work with. I think about her work when I start doubting whether I belong in the rooms I walk into. Her career is also a lesson in patience that I carry. She started performing at 13 and did not break through on a global scale until a decade later. I am 20 building things that might not matter for years. That long runway does not scare me the way it used to. Sabrina Carpenter's music has become part of how I process being young, ambitious, and uncertain at the same time. Not because she solved those things. Because she made them sound worth it.

I grew up in Uganda where you do not talk about mental health. You push through. You handle it. Admitting you are struggling means admitting weakness, and weakness was not something my family had the luxury to show. So when I got to Oral Roberts University on an F-1 visa and started feeling the weight of being 8,000 miles from home with no federal aid, no work authorization, and a family converting shillings to dollars to keep me here, I handled it the same way. I pushed through. Sophomore year I started waking up at 3 AM running through financial scenarios. Not occasionally. Regularly. I was building two companies, auditing financial records for a campus startup, holding a 3.5 GPA, and showing up everywhere smiling. Nobody knew. I did not let them. The thing about sustained pressure is that it changes your beliefs quietly. I started believing the smile was the real thing and the 3 AM version was something to manage, not understand. That is a dangerous way to live. I talked to a counselor at ORU for the first time because I ran out of energy to manage it alone. That conversation did not solve my financial situation. But it broke something open in how I thought about strength. Strength is not the absence of struggle. It is what you build after you admit the struggle is real. That shift changed my relationships. I stopped performing stability for my parents. I told them I was tired. That was hard. It also made us closer than we had been across the distance. It changed my aspirations too. I want to build technology that serves East Africa. That goal has not changed. But now I want to build it with the understanding that the people I am building for, and the people on my team, carry things that do not show up in productivity metrics. I want to lead differently because of what I learned about myself in those quiet hours. Mental health is not separate from ambition. It is underneath it.

There is a specific kind of loneliness that comes from being the only person in the room who does not have a safety net. I moved from Uganda to attend Oral Roberts University on an F-1 visa. When most of my classmates were applying for FAFSA or calling their parents to figure out financial options, I was calculating currency exchange rates and watching my family stretch their income across continents to keep me here. I could not work off-campus. I could not access federal aid. If I lost my status, I had to go home. That pressure does not leave the room when you walk into class. Sophomore year, I started waking up at 3 AM with my mind already running problem lists. Not normal anxiety. More like a background process that never fully stopped. I was building two startups, holding a 3.5 GPA, and smiling in every group photo. Nobody knew. I eventually talked to a counselor at ORU. Not because I wanted to. Because I ran out of energy to keep it all inside. That conversation did not fix anything immediately, but it started something. I learned to separate what I could control from what I could not. I could not change my visa. I could work on what I built while I was here. Mental health is not always a crisis. Sometimes it is a slow drain that nobody sees until you stop and admit you are tired. Elijah's story matters to me because I know what it costs to carry something alone. I want to keep going, keep building, and do it without pretending the weight is not real.

Chess taught me to think two moves ahead. Every decision on the board has consequences you can't undo, and that has shaped how I approach everything from debugging code to building client solutions at Salem Innovation Solutions. When I was developing a CAN bus diagnostic system for fleet vehicles last year, I hit a problem that felt like a chess endgame: limited resources, multiple competing constraints, and no clean solution in sight. I had to map out every dependency, anticipate where the system would fail under load, and make tradeoffs that I knew would matter three steps later. That's chess thinking. The patience chess builds is just as real. I have played games that lasted two hours with no clear advantage for either side. You learn to keep your head clear, resist the urge to force a win, and wait for the moment when precision matters. That patience showed up when I spent weeks auditing 180 financial records for the Skitbit platform at ORU. It was tedious, methodical work, but rushing it would have broken the accuracy we needed. Chess also teaches you that every opponent has a plan. In technology, that opponent is often the system itself or an unknown failure mode. I ran into this while building AI agent workflows with LangGraph for my company PartnerTulsa. I had to think like the failure: where does this break, what does it want to do that I don't want it to do? I started playing chess at 12 in Uganda. It was not a hobby my school advertised. A few of us just started playing after class. But it changed how I think, and that shift follows me into every room I walk into today.

My family is not poor by Ugandan standards. But my father's monthly income, converted to dollars, would not cover two weeks of my tuition at Oral Roberts University. That is the reality I work inside. I came to the United States on an F-1 visa in 2024, which means federal financial aid is not available to me. Every semester is a calculation my parents do from Uganda: what can they send, what exchange rate will hold, what has to wait. I think about that often. It is one of the reasons I move fast. What that financial pressure has taught me is that I cannot afford to coast. I started a company, PartnerTulsa, during my first year of school. I do consulting work through Salem Innovation Solutions, building real systems for clients. My GPA is a 3.5. I run all of this inside the constraints of a visa that limits where I can earn income. My plan is to return to East Africa after graduation and build technology infrastructure for markets that have been left out of the digital economy. Farmers in Uganda make pricing decisions without any data. Small businesses manage finances on paper. I want to build tools that change that, not as charity but as working products designed for those specific realities. The financial gap between what my family can afford and what this education costs is real. It is also what keeps me focused. I am not here to find myself. I am here to build something specific. Scholarships like this one make that possible.

Faith has shaped the way I make decisions more than anything else in my life. I grew up in a Christian home in Uganda, and the principles I learned there are not separate from my academic or professional work. They run through it. The most direct way faith has shaped my academic goals is through the choice of where I study. I chose Oral Roberts University specifically because it is a Christian institution that takes both academic rigor and spiritual formation seriously. At ORU, chapel is not optional, prayer is part of the culture, and the faculty approach teaching as a calling. I found that combination important. I did not want to separate my faith from my education, and at ORU I do not have to. Faith has also shaped how I work. I try to carry a standard of honesty and integrity into everything I do professionally. When I am consulting through Salem Innovation Solutions and I find a problem in a system I built, I tell the client immediately rather than hoping they do not notice. When I am working with collaborators, I give credit where it is due. These are not just professional habits. They come from a belief that how I do my work matters, not just what I produce. My faith also gives me a framework for thinking about why I am here. I came to the United States from Uganda at 18 with a clear purpose: to develop the technical skills to build technology infrastructure for underserved communities in East Africa. That goal is not purely career-driven. It comes from a belief that I have been given specific abilities and access for a reason, and that reason is not just personal advancement. The agricultural data systems I want to build in Uganda when I graduate could change the economic position of thousands of farmers. That kind of work feels like an answer to something. My parents are the other people who pushed me toward higher education. My father runs a business and has always treated knowledge as the most portable asset a person can have. My mother made education a non-negotiable expectation from the time I was young. Coming to the United States to study was a sacrifice for my whole family, not just me. The difference in exchange rates means each tuition payment is significant. I carry that awareness into every semester. At ORU, I maintain a 3.5 GPA while running a technology company called PartnerTulsa and doing consulting work. I am a sophomore studying Information Systems and Technology. I have built real systems for real clients, including a CAN bus diagnostic tool for fleet vehicles and AI automation workflows for small businesses. I do this work because I want to be capable of something specific by the time I graduate, and I approach it with the same commitment I bring to my faith: consistently, with integrity, and with a clear sense of why it matters. I am grateful for scholarship support that recognizes faith as part of a student's full formation. It is part of mine.

My plan is specific. I want to build technology infrastructure for agricultural markets in East Africa, starting in Uganda, that gives smallholder farmers access to real-time pricing data and nearby buyer connections. This is not a general ambition. It is a response to something I saw growing up. Farmers in my community sold their crops without knowing what those crops were worth that day. They negotiated with middlemen who had pricing information and they did not. The farmer absorbed the cost of that information gap every single time. It was not a failure of effort or intelligence. It was a structural problem, and structural problems have structural solutions. I came to the United States in 2024 to build those solutions. I study Information Systems and Technology at Oral Roberts University, where I maintain a 3.5 GPA. While in school, I started a company called PartnerTulsa that builds AI automation tools for small businesses, and I do consulting through Salem Innovation Solutions where I have built real systems for paying clients. I am developing the technical and operational skills I need to build something meaningful when I go back. The system I want to build would work on basic mobile hardware in low-connectivity environments. It would give farmers current crop prices at nearby markets, matched to available buyers and transport options. It would not require a smartphone or consistent data coverage. It would be designed from the ground up for the conditions people actually live in. The impact I am aiming for is economic. When farmers know what their crop is worth before they negotiate, they keep more of the value they create. That changes household income, which changes what families can afford for food, school fees, and healthcare. These are not small effects at scale. Before coming to the United States, I helped coordinate community outreach at my church in Uganda, running skills workshops for school leavers who did not have access to vocational training. At ORU, I organized a free computing workshop for students who were struggling with foundational technical skills. Both experiences taught me the same thing: the most useful help is specific and practical. That is what I want to offer at a larger scale. Not inspiration, but infrastructure. Not a program, but a system that keeps running after I build it and move on to the next problem. The Our Destiny Our Future Scholarship would help me stay on track toward that goal. Every semester I complete brings me closer to being ready to build it.

What I want to build is a data infrastructure layer for agricultural markets in Uganda. I grew up watching farmers in my community sell their crops without any real information about what those crops were worth that day. They negotiated with middlemen who had pricing data they did not. The farmer always lost something in that gap. Not because they were not smart or capable, but because the information was not available to them. I came to the United States in 2024 to study Information Systems and Technology at Oral Roberts University specifically to build the skills to close that gap. I maintain a 3.5 GPA and I am already building: I run a company called PartnerTulsa that develops AI automation tools for small businesses in Tulsa. I do consulting through Salem Innovation Solutions. I built a CAN bus diagnostic system for fleet vehicles. These are not the end goal. They are how I am learning to build things that work. The thing I want to build when I go back to Uganda after graduation is a market data system that gives farmers real-time pricing for their crops, matched to nearby buyers and transport options. Not an app that requires a smartphone and a data plan. Something that works on basic mobile hardware, in low connectivity conditions, with a backend that can scale across different crop types and regions. This would change the negotiating position of every farmer who uses it. Instead of guessing or accepting whatever the middleman says, they would know the actual market rate. That shifts economic power in a very direct way. The impact on my community would be immediate and concrete. Uganda has millions of smallholder farmers. Agricultural income is the primary income for a large portion of the population. A system that improves pricing accuracy even modestly across that base changes lives at scale. I am building toward this right now, one project and one course at a time. This scholarship would help me stay in school and stay focused on that goal.

The challenge is called "First Impressions, Last Chance." Here is how it works. All the islanders are split into two groups without knowing who is in the other group. Each person in Group A writes a list of five words that they believe describe them: how they think they come across, their personality on the outside. Each person in Group B writes a list of five words that describe what they actually want in a partner, not what they say they want in public but what they genuinely wrote down alone. Then the reveal happens. A host reads both lists aloud, side by side, for each pair that has been secretly matched by the producers. The islanders hear, for the first time, how they present themselves versus what the person across from them was actually hoping for. The challenge part: each matched pair then has three minutes to have a conversation with no phone, no distractions, and one rule. Each person has to say one thing they genuinely meant but have not said yet this season. Not a compliment. Not a recap of something that already happened. Something real that has been unsaid. After the three minutes, the group votes on which pair had the most honest conversation. The winners get an advantage in the next recoupling. What makes this challenge work is that it does not reward performance. Love Island is full of moments where people say the right things because cameras are watching. This challenge creates a format where the most strategic move is to actually be honest, because the group can tell when someone is performing. It flips the usual dynamic. It also creates good television because the gap between how someone presents and what their match was hoping for is almost always interesting. That gap is where the real conversations start. The three-minute rule forces brevity, which forces priority. You cannot fill the time with small talk. You have to decide quickly what actually matters to say. That pressure is where character shows up. I would call it the challenge that rewards people for forgetting the cameras are there.

I grew up in Uganda in a household where contribution was expected, not optional. My parents ran a small business and my siblings and I were part of how it functioned. We kept records, handled logistics, helped solve problems when they came up. That baseline shaped how I think about showing up in a community: you contribute where you have something to offer, and you do it without waiting to be asked. I am now a sophomore at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, studying Information Systems and Technology on an F-1 visa. My family is still in Uganda. Contributing to them looks different from this distance: it means regular communication, sending what I can when I can, and working hard enough that my education justifies the investment they are making in it. That is a form of accountability I take seriously. At ORU, I contribute by sharing what I know. In my first year, I organized a Saturday workshop for students who were struggling with foundational computing skills. I walked them through tools and workflows they were embarrassed to admit they did not understand. About fifteen students attended. Several told me it was the first time they felt like they were catching up rather than falling behind. I did not advertise it widely. I saw the gap and had the skills to address it, so I did. I also started a company called PartnerTulsa, which builds AI automation tools for small businesses. Through that work and through consulting with Salem Innovation Solutions, I contribute to the local business community by solving real operational problems. I do not treat that as separate from community involvement. Building tools that help small businesses run more efficiently is a direct form of contribution. After college, I plan to return to East Africa and work on technology infrastructure for underserved communities. Agricultural markets in Uganda operate without the data systems that could help farmers make better decisions. Rural financial services are limited in ways that trap people in cycles of low liquidity. I want to build software that addresses those specific problems. Not in a general way, but with the precision that comes from actually knowing the context. My plan for sustained community involvement is not a program or a nonprofit. It is a career. I intend to build companies and systems in East Africa that create genuine economic value for communities that have been underserved by existing technology markets. That work will involve me directly in community problems every day. I am building toward that right now, one project and one course at a time. The Marie Jean Baptiste Memorial Scholarship supports students who contribute to their families and communities and plan to continue doing so. That is exactly what I am doing and exactly what I intend to keep doing.

Education gave me a specific kind of permission. Not permission to dream, I had that already. Permission to build something real with the direction I had already chosen. I grew up in Uganda knowing I wanted to work in technology. I could see, even as a teenager, the gap between what digital tools could do and what was actually available to people in my community. Farmers could not get real-time pricing for their crops. Small business owners kept records by hand. Banking required physical presence in places that were hours away for rural families. These were not abstract problems. They were the conditions my family and neighbors navigated every day. I decided early that I wanted to understand technology well enough to do something about that. When I arrived at Oral Roberts University in 2024 on an F-1 visa, I was 18 and completely alone in a new country. No relatives, no familiar systems, no margin for failure. The first semester required adjustments I had not fully anticipated. The pace of academic life here was different. The cultural expectations around participation, networking, and professional presentation were things I had to learn from scratch. There were moments where the distance from home felt very large. What helped was the clarity of my goal. I was not here to explore. I was here to get specific skills and bring them back to East Africa. That clarity kept me moving when the adjustment was hard. Academically, I have maintained a 3.5 GPA while doing things most students are not doing alongside their coursework. Within my first year, I started a company called PartnerTulsa, which builds AI automation tools for small businesses. I do consulting through Salem Innovation Solutions, where I have built systems for real clients: a CAN bus diagnostic tool for fleet vehicles, automation pipelines for operational workflows, AI-based tools using LangGraph that help businesses reduce repetitive manual work. I also completed a detailed financial audit of 180 records for a student-run venture at ORU called Skitbit. None of that was handed to me. An F-1 visa limits where and how I can earn income. Federal aid is not available to me. My family supports me from Uganda, and the exchange rate means tuition represents a significant financial commitment on their part. Every semester is a calculation. Scholarships are not supplementary for me. They determine whether I can continue. The challenges I have overcome are both logistical and personal. Operationally: navigating visa constraints while trying to build a viable company. Financially: making the math work semester after semester without the aid options domestic students have. Personally: maintaining the confidence to keep building in rooms where no one expected me to succeed quickly. I was a teenager from Uganda with an accent and no network. I had to earn trust through output, and I did. Education has given me the tools to do that. Not just technical skills, though those matter enormously. It has given me frameworks for thinking about systems, understanding what breaks and why, and building things that hold up under pressure. Every course I have taken has contributed to a picture I am assembling deliberately. Database design, network architecture, systems analysis, algorithm development: each piece connects to a problem I plan to solve when I go back. My goal after graduation is to return to East Africa and build technology infrastructure for underserved markets. Agricultural data systems for farmers. Financial tools designed for contexts without reliable banking infrastructure. Digital operations platforms for small businesses that currently cannot afford or access the enterprise software that runs companies in developed markets. These are solvable problems, and I intend to solve them. I am not waiting until after graduation to start. PartnerTulsa is already a working company with paying clients. The work I do in Tulsa is building the case studies and operational experience I will carry when I scale into East African markets. Every project I complete is both immediate income and deliberate long-term preparation for what comes next. The Dream BIG, Rise HIGHER Scholarship is for students who have faced real obstacles and kept moving toward something. I qualify. More than that, I am building something with the direction this education has given me. The scholarship would let me do that with less financial distraction and more focus on the work that matters. I came here to become capable of something specific. Education has given me that capability, piece by piece. I came here with a purpose, and I intend to use it fully, and without apology.

I arrived in the United States in 2024 from Uganda, alone, at 18 years old. No relatives here. No safety net. Just an acceptance letter to Oral Roberts University and a clear sense of what I came to do. Uganda is where I grew up, where I went to school, where I learned to think carefully about problems and work through them without giving up. It is also a place with real structural constraints. Digital infrastructure is growing but uneven. Economic opportunity is concentrated in ways that leave a lot of people out. I saw that clearly before I left, and it shaped exactly what I came to study. I enrolled in Information Systems and Technology. I maintain a 3.5 GPA. Within my first year, I started a technology company called PartnerTulsa, which builds AI automation tools for small businesses. I also began consulting through Salem Innovation Solutions, where I have built real systems for real clients, including a CAN bus diagnostic tool for fleet vehicles. None of that was easy to set up. An F-1 visa limits where and how I can earn income. Federal financial aid is unavailable to me. Every operational decision involves working inside a tight set of legal and financial constraints. My family supports me from Uganda, and the difference in exchange rates means each tuition payment is a significant sacrifice. I think about that regularly, and it makes me work harder, not slower. The immigrant experience, for me, is not a single story. It is an accumulation of adjustments. Learning the rhythm of American professional culture. Understanding how systems work here that I could not have learned from across an ocean. Building trust with people who did not know me and had no reason to take a chance on me at first. Each of those adjustments took time and cost something. But they also gave me something. I understand two different economic and social environments in a way that is genuinely useful. When I think about building technology for East African markets, I am not guessing what those users need. I am drawing on memory, family, and observation. That perspective is not replicable from a classroom. My career goal is to return to East Africa after graduation and build technology infrastructure that addresses real gaps. Agricultural supply chains in Uganda operate with almost no digital integration. Small business owners manage finances on paper or with tools that were not designed for their context. Financial services are improving but still limited for rural populations. I want to build systems that work for those specific environments. Not adapted versions of Western tools. Things designed from the ground up for those realities. That is why I came here. Not to stay, but to learn what I need to build something back home that actually works. This scholarship would help me stay focused on that goal without the financial pressure pulling my attention in directions that do not serve it.

Math is the only language I have found that does not depend on who is speaking it. A proof is either valid or it is not. An equation balances or it does not. That kind of clarity is rare, and I have been drawn to it since I was a kid in Uganda working through problems long after class ended. What I love most about math is that it forces precision. You cannot be approximately right in algebra. You cannot gesture at a concept and call it done. Every step has to hold, and if it does not, the error is sitting somewhere waiting to be found. That discipline has shaped how I think outside of math too. When I build software systems, I approach them the same way. I look for where the logic breaks down, where the assumptions were wrong, where the edge cases live. At Oral Roberts University, studying Information Systems and Technology, I use math constantly. Systems design, database normalization, algorithm analysis, network protocols: all of it rests on mathematical foundations. The work I have done with Salem Innovation Solutions, including building a CAN bus diagnostic system for fleet vehicles, required me to think mathematically about signal patterns, thresholds, and error rates. That project would not have been possible without comfort with numbers. I also find math satisfying in a way that is hard to explain. There is a specific feeling when a problem that seemed opaque suddenly resolves, when all the pieces line up and the answer is exactly what it should be. It is not like finishing any other kind of task. It feels like something was already true, and you finally found your way to it. I want to keep building systems that solve real problems, especially in East Africa where I plan to work after graduation. Infrastructure problems at scale are, at their core, optimization problems. Math is the tool that makes them tractable. That is why I keep studying it.

In the spring of my freshman year at Oral Roberts University, I organized a free technology workshop for students on campus who were struggling with basic computing skills. I noticed early on that several students in my major lacked foundational knowledge in areas like file management, spreadsheet use, and navigating development environments. These were not advanced topics, but gaps in them were slowing people down in ways that compounded over time. I reserved a room, built a short curriculum covering the most common pain points, and spent a Saturday morning working through it with a group of about fifteen students. I brought my own laptop, walked through demonstrations live, answered questions as they came up, and stayed two hours past the planned end time because people kept asking things they had been embarrassed to ask in class. A few students told me afterward it was the first time they had felt caught up. What I organized was not large by any standard measure. But it was mine to organize, and I did it because I saw a specific gap and had the skills to address it. That matters more to me than scale. Before coming to the United States, I was involved in my church in Uganda, where I helped coordinate outreach activities for young people in our community. We ran skills workshops for school leavers who did not have access to vocational training. I helped facilitate sessions on basic financial literacy and how to approach small business registration in Uganda. The people who came were not looking for inspiration. They were looking for concrete information that would help them move forward. I tried to give them that. Both of those experiences point to the same understanding of leadership: it is most useful when it is specific. A leader who gives general encouragement is less valuable than one who shows up with a skill and shares it. The Students Today Leaders Forever model of servant leadership resonates with me because it is grounded in action rather than title. Leadership through service means you do the work before you receive any credit for it. Often you do the work and receive no credit at all. I run a company called PartnerTulsa and do consulting through Salem Innovation Solutions. In both, I try to carry the same posture. When a client has a problem I can solve, I solve it and explain what I did and why so they understand it going forward. I am not trying to make myself indispensable. I am trying to leave people more capable than I found them. That is what service means to me. Not performing helpfulness, but actually building something in another person that was not there before. The STLF Memorial Pay It Forward Scholarship represents that value directly, and I want to honor it by continuing to do this kind of work, in bigger and more connected ways, as I grow professionally.

I came to the United States from Uganda in 2024 to study Information Systems and Technology at Oral Roberts University. I had no relatives here, no safety net, and a clear goal: build the technical skills to create real infrastructure for underserved communities in East Africa. I am a sophomore with a 3.5 GPA, and I have spent every semester finding ways to translate what I learn in class into work that actually runs in the real world. Academically, I have maintained that GPA across a course load that includes systems analysis, database management, and programming courses that require both theory and practical execution. I am not a passive student. I show up with questions, I use office hours seriously, and I track down answers when a concept does not fully land in lecture. My GPA reflects consistent effort across subjects that do not always come easily, especially while running a company at the same time. Outside the classroom, I run a technology company called PartnerTulsa, which I started while enrolled full time. PartnerTulsa focuses on AI automation and business systems. I have built workflow automation tools using LangGraph and related AI frameworks that help small businesses manage repetitive processes more efficiently. Running the company while in school means I handle client communication, system architecture, and billing, all inside the constraints of my F-1 visa, which limits where and how international students can work. I also do consulting work with Salem Innovation Solutions, where I have built technical systems for real clients. One project that stands out was a CAN bus diagnostic system for fleet vehicles. CAN bus is a communication protocol used in automotive systems. The task required me to understand both the engineering and data layers, write code to parse diagnostic signals, and build a system that flagged anomalies in real time. It was not a school project. A real company needed it to function reliably, and I built it to do exactly that. At ORU, I contributed to the Skitbit platform project, where I audited 180 financial records to verify accuracy and identify discrepancies. That project taught me something about what real work actually requires: it is often slow, methodical, and unremarkable in the moment. The value shows up later, when the numbers hold up under scrutiny. My faith has shaped how I approach all of this. I grew up in a Christian home in Uganda and that foundation has stayed with me across the distance. At ORU, I find myself in a community where faith and academic rigor coexist, and that combination suits the way I was raised to think about both. I attend church, I take the chapel requirements at ORU seriously rather than treating them as a box to check, and I try to carry a standard of honesty into the way I work professionally. That means telling clients when a system has a problem rather than hoping they do not notice. It means being transparent with collaborators about what I know and what I do not. The Christian character I grew up with is not separate from my professional life. It runs through it. As an international student, I am ineligible for most federal financial aid. My family supports my education from Uganda, and each tuition payment represents real sacrifice given the exchange rate and economic difference between our two countries. Scholarships are not supplementary for me. They are what make continuing possible. The Christian Fitness Association General Scholarship would directly reduce the financial pressure behind every academic decision I make, and allow me to give more of my attention to the actual work of learning and building. After graduation, I plan to return to East Africa and build technology systems that address real infrastructure gaps. Mobile technology adoption in Uganda is growing fast but backend infrastructure, including financial integration, data systems, and supply chain software for agricultural markets, lags behind in ways that limit economic mobility. The skills I am building at ORU and through PartnerTulsa point directly at that problem. I am not waiting until graduation to start. PartnerTulsa is already an early version of what I intend to build at a larger scale back home. I applied for this scholarship because the Christian Fitness Association emphasizes character alongside academic achievement, and I do not separate those things. Achievement without integrity produces work that does not hold. I want to build things that last, and I want to be someone who can be trusted with them. That is what I am working toward.

The first time it happened, I was a freshman doing consulting work for a technology firm in Tulsa. I had spent three weeks building an automated audit pipeline for a client's financial records. The task came to me because my supervisor did not know how to approach it. He gave me the direction. I figured out the execution. Presentation day came. The client was impressed. My supervisor walked through every feature I had built, using the word "we" throughout. My name never came up. Afterward, he thanked me with a handshake and said "good teamwork." I was the only engineer on the project. I walked back to my desk and sat with it for a while. I was not angry in the explosive way. It was quieter than that. I had expected acknowledgment. Not a speech, not a title, just some signal that the work traced back to me. Instead, I watched someone else step into the credit and the client relationship that came with it. I did not say anything that day. Part of that was strategic. Part of it was that I did not fully trust my own instincts yet. I was 18, a first-generation student from Uganda on an F-1 visa, and I was acutely aware of my position. Raising the issue felt like a risk I was not ready to take. What I did instead was write it down. I kept a record of what I had built: the original specifications my supervisor had emailed me, the code commits with my name attached, and a thread where I had walked him through the design decisions. Not because I planned to escalate, but because something in me understood that documentation was the closest thing to reclaiming ownership I had available. I also talked to a professor at Oral Roberts University who had been mentoring me through some of my coursework. He told me something I have carried since: "The record exists even if the room does not acknowledge it." He meant the work itself. The code ran. The audit ran clean. The client's financials were accurate because of decisions I made at two in the morning while staring at a Python script that kept failing on edge cases. That happened. No one could take it back. Three months later, my supervisor called me back to fix a bug that had surfaced in the same system. He needed me specifically. He knew, even if he had not said so in the meeting, where the work had come from. Looking back, I think I responded the right way for who I was at that time, but not the way I would respond today. Now I would say something directly, right after the meeting, in a private conversation. Not a confrontation. Something like: "I would appreciate it if we could make sure my contributions are visible going forward." That is a sentence I have practiced since. It is specific, professional, and it costs the other person almost nothing to agree to. The experience changed how I operate. I became more deliberate about establishing visibility before the work is done, not after. When I built a CAN bus diagnostic system for fleet vehicles at a later role with Salem Innovation Solutions, I sent weekly progress updates that documented what I was building and why. When I contributed to a financial audit at a student-run venture at ORU, I made sure my name was on the deliverable from the first draft. Not out of ego. I did it because I learned that credit structures future opportunity. If no one knows you built the thing, they will not come to you when the next thing needs building. I also became a more generous creditor myself. When I work with other people, I mention names. I say what a colleague figured out, or which idea came from someone else and I extended it. It costs almost nothing, and it changes the texture of how a team works together. The student from Uganda who sat quietly at his desk after that presentation is not who I am today. He needed the experience to understand what he was willing to accept. I am not sure I would have learned that any other way. I needed to feel the absence of credit to understand what it meant, and once I felt it, I decided it was not something I would let pass in silence again. Would I react the same way? No. But I do not regret that I did at the time. It taught me that professionalism and self-advocacy are not opposites. You can carry yourself with integrity and still speak up for what you have earned. In fact, that combination is the only one worth building a career on. The Sturz Legacy Scholarship is specifically for students who share Marian Sturz's indomitable strength. I read about her life and was struck by how much of it required exactly this: knowing your worth in rooms that did not always reflect it back to you, and continuing anyway. That is not a comfortable quality to develop. It usually comes from a specific moment. Mine came from a handshake after a presentation and a quiet walk back to my desk.

My name is Isaac Junior Kituuka. I grew up in Uganda and came to the United States at 18 to study Information Systems and Technology at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I am a sophomore with a 3.5 GPA, and I am also running a small tech company called PartnerTulsa while doing consulting work through Salem Innovation Solutions. My plans after graduation are to work in technology systems and infrastructure, with a specific focus on bridging digital gaps in East Africa. Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania are markets where mobile technology is advancing fast but the backend infrastructure, including data systems, automation, and financial integration, lags behind. I want to build those layers. I started PartnerTulsa as a way to develop practical skills in AI automation and business systems while I am still in school. After I graduate, I want to scale that kind of work into East African markets and build something that has long-term value for those communities. My first language is Luganda. It is the primary language of the Baganda people in central Uganda, and it is the language I grew up speaking at home. I also speak English fluently, having been educated in English from a young age. Coming to the United States gave English a different weight for me. At home, English was academic. Here, it is everything: how I navigate institutions, make professional connections, and present myself in situations where people are forming quick impressions. Being bilingual has real benefits that I notice every day. It keeps two different ways of framing the world active in my mind at once. Luganda and English do not map onto each other precisely, which means I am often translating concepts rather than words. That process has made me more deliberate about how I communicate. When I explain a technical system to a non-technical client, I think about the concept first, then find the right words. That is exactly the skill bilingualism builds. The challenges are just as real. When I first arrived, the speed of conversational American English caught me off. Not the words, but the rhythm, the idioms, the way humor and seriousness blur in casual speech. There were meetings in my first semester where I understood every word individually but missed the tone of the room. I had to learn a social layer of the language that no class teaches. There is also the cost of code-switching. Moving between Luganda and English is not effortless. Each language comes with a different posture, a different relationship to formality and directness. English asks me to be explicit. Luganda relies more on context and relationship. Holding both fluently takes energy, and some days that energy is noticeable. But I would not trade it. The distance between two languages is also the distance between two ways of being in the world, and I get to move across that space every day.

Financial pressure does not disappear when you are focused on a problem. It just sits at the edge of everything. That is the reality for me as an international student from Uganda studying Information Systems and Technology at Oral Roberts University on an F-1 visa. My visa status bars me from working off-campus. Federal aid is not available to me. Every dollar of my education cost falls entirely on my family or on scholarships like this one. I want to be honest about what that pressure feels like. My parents support me from Uganda, and each tuition payment represents real sacrifice on their part. The exchange rate alone means my tuition in dollars costs far more in Ugandan shillings than most domestic students would comprehend. When I am sitting in a systems design class or debugging a CAN bus diagnostic module at 1 a.m., there is always a quiet awareness that the opportunity I am in cost my family something large. Receiving the Arlin Diaz Memorial Scholarship would not just reduce a number on a bill. It would give me the space to be more fully present in my work. Right now, I take on as much project-based income as I can within the boundaries of my visa status. I built an AI workflow automation system for my company, PartnerTulsa, and I do consulting work through Salem Innovation Solutions. These are things I value. They are real work that teaches me. But they take time away from academic depth. A scholarship like this would let me go further in my coursework, pursue research I currently cannot afford the time for, and finish my degree with less financial anxiety distorting every decision I make. I did not know Arlin Diaz before I found this scholarship. After reading about who he was and what this memorial represents, I found myself thinking about how often the people who deserve acknowledgment do not get it while they are alive to receive it. This scholarship is a way of saying his life mattered and continues to matter through the people it supports. My way of honoring that would be direct: I would do the work. I am pursuing a degree that positions me to build technology for underserved communities, specifically in East Africa. There is a gap in digital infrastructure across Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania that I have watched my family and community navigate around for years. Slow networks, limited access to banking, no integration between agricultural markets and the tools that could help farmers price their crops fairly. These are solvable problems with the right systems. That is what I am training to build. Arlin's story, as I understand it, is one of someone who kept going despite the weight of a condition that would have stopped many people. I carry something different, but building a life under constraint is not unfamiliar to me. I came to the United States alone at 18 with a specific goal and limited room for error. I have kept a 3.5 GPA while working, building real projects, and learning what it means to operate in a country with a completely different set of systems and expectations. Honoring Arlin's legacy means continuing to push through the constraints, and using whatever advantage I gain to do something that reaches beyond my own career. I plan to return to East Africa after I finish my education and use what I have learned here to build something there. That is not an abstract plan. It is the reason I came.

I am a sophomore at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, pursuing a degree in Information Systems and Technology. My path toward a career in technology was shaped by a realization that technical skills can be a powerful tool for serving others and protecting their privacy. This journey began with a security audit of a web platform called Skitbit. While researching the application, I found user credentials stored in plaintext within the browser's localStorage. I also discovered that the client-side authentication middleware could be bypassed with a simple URL parameter change. This experience taught me that digital security is about more than just code. It is about a responsibility to protect individuals and their data in an increasingly digital world. My career goal is to use my technical expertise to build a more reliable and secure digital infrastructure, particularly for communities that are often underserved. I currently operate my own technology consulting firm called Salem Innovation Solutions. We provide software development and technical infrastructure support to various organizations in Tulsa. For instance, I serve as the Live Production Director at Victory Church. In this role, I manage a complex AV and production infrastructure that handles large-scale services and events, helping to connect people through technology. I also enjoy working on lower-level hardware projects, such as a recent CAN bus IoT project. In that project, I used two ESP32 nodes and SN65HVD230 transceivers to establish communication protocols between independent systems. These projects help me bridge the gap between software and hardware while solving critical problems. Coming from Uganda as an F-1 international student, I face several challenges, including a lack of eligibility for federal financial aid. To meet this challenge, I fund my entire tuition through the income I generate with Salem Innovation Solutions. This self-funding requirement has taught me the value of resilience and the importance of practical skills. I am also deeply involved in community outreach through PartnerTulsa. We focus on STEM education and workforce access, providing training and technical resources to minority students. I believe that providing access to technical education is one of the most effective ways to empower individuals and help them improve their lives. My long-term plan is to expand Salem Innovation Solutions into East Africa. I want to build a regional hub for technical excellence in Uganda that can provide high-level consulting and secure software development services. By hiring and training local developers, I can help support a more reliable tech ecosystem in my home country. My Christian faith drives my commitment to serving others through my work. Whether I am directing the production at Victory Church or mentoring a young developer, I strive to use my talents for a positive purpose. Winning this scholarship would allow me to focus more on these long-term goals and my more complex academic projects.

I am a sophomore at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I study Information Systems and Technology. My educational path has been defined by a desire to understand complex systems and secure them for the future. This journey began with a security audit of a web platform called Skitbit. While researching the application, I found user credentials stored in plaintext within the browser's localStorage. I also discovered that the client-side authentication middleware could be bypassed with a simple URL parameter change. This moment was a turning point for me. It showed me that technical competence is not just about building things. It is about a responsibility to protect individuals and their data. My family dynamic has been a major influence on my drive and ambition. Growing up in Uganda, I was part of a close-knit family that valued education and service. My parents instilled in me the importance of hard work and self-reliance. As an F-1 international student, I face the challenge of being ineligible for federal financial aid. To meet this challenge, I fund my entire tuition through my own technology consulting firm, Salem Innovation Solutions. This self-funding requirement has taught me the value of financial discipline and the importance of practical, marketable skills. My family back home continues to be a source of motivation as I pursue my goals in the United States. In Tulsa, I am actively involved in my community through various technical roles. I serve as the Live Production Director at Victory Church, where I manage a complex AV and production infrastructure for large-scale events. I also enjoy working on lower-level hardware projects, such as a recent CAN bus IoT project. In that project, I used two ESP32 nodes and SN65HVD230 transceivers to establish communication protocols between independent systems. These projects allow me to bridge the gap between software and hardware while solving real-world problems. I also dedicate time to STEM outreach through PartnerTulsa, helping to provide technical training and workforce access to others. My future plans involve expanding Salem Innovation Solutions into East Africa. I want to build a regional hub for technical excellence in Uganda that can provide high-level consulting and secure software development services. By hiring and training local developers, I can help support a more reliable tech ecosystem in my home country. My Christian faith drives my commitment to serving others through my work. Whether I am directing the production at Victory Church or mentoring a young developer, I strive to use my talents for a purpose beyond myself. This scholarship would be an essential resource as I continue my education and work toward these long-term goals.

I am a sophomore at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I study Information Systems and Technology. My path into the world of STEM was paved by a deep curiosity about how digital systems function and, more importantly, how they can fail. This interest was solidified during a security audit I performed on a web platform called Skitbit. While analyzing the application, I found user credentials stored in plaintext within the browser's localStorage. I also discovered that the client-side authentication middleware could be bypassed with a simple URL parameter change. This moment was a turning point for me. It showed me that technical knowledge is not just about writing code. It is about a responsibility to protect people and their data. My goal is to use my IST degree to make a positive impact on the world by improving digital infrastructure and accessibility. I currently run a technology consulting firm called Salem Innovation Solutions. We provide software development and technical support to various clients in Tulsa. For instance, I serve as the Live Production Director at Victory Church. I manage a complex AV and production infrastructure that handles large-scale services and broadcasts. I also enjoy working on lower-level hardware projects, such as a recent CAN bus IoT project. In that project, I used two ESP32 nodes and SN65HVD230 transceivers to establish communication protocols. These projects help me bridge the gap between abstract concepts and real-world hardware. Coming to the United States from Uganda as an F-1 international student has presented me with many challenges. One of the most significant hurdles is the lack of eligibility for federal financial aid. Because I cannot rely on loans or grants, I fund my entire tuition through the income I generate with Salem Innovation Solutions. This self-funding requirement has taught me the value of resilience and hard work. It has also given me a unique perspective on the importance of practical skills. I am also deeply involved in community outreach through PartnerTulsa, where we focus on STEM education and workforce access for minority students. I plan to eventually expand Salem Innovation Solutions into East Africa. My home region of Uganda has a growing tech sector, but it needs more high-level technical consulting and secure software development. I want to build a regional hub for technical excellence that can hire and train local developers. My Christian faith drives my commitment to serving others through technology. Whether I am directing the production at Victory Church or mentoring a young student in Tulsa, I strive to use my talents for a purpose beyond myself. Winning this scholarship would allow me to focus more on my more complex academic projects and my long-term expansion plans.

I am a sophomore at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, pursuing a degree in Information Systems and Technology. My interest in this field began with a security audit of a web platform called Skitbit. During this process, I discovered that the application was storing plaintext credentials in the browser's localStorage. I also found that the client-side middleware for authentication could be bypassed with a simple URL parameter change. This experience taught me that digital security is not just about writing code. It is about taking responsibility for the privacy and safety of others. Outside of my studies, I run a technology consulting firm called Salem Innovation Solutions. We work with various clients in the Tulsa area to provide software development and technical infrastructure support. For instance, I serve as the Live Production Director at Victory Church. I manage the AV and production infrastructure for large-scale services and events. This role requires me to solve complex technical problems in real time. I also enjoy working on lower-level systems. I recently completed a CAN bus IoT project using two ESP32 nodes and SN65HVD230 transceivers. These projects help me bridge the gap between abstract software concepts and physical hardware. As an F-1 international student from Uganda, I face unique financial challenges. I am not eligible for federal financial aid, so I fund my entire tuition through my work at Salem Innovation Solutions. This self-funding requirement has made me incredibly disciplined and focused on my career goals. I am also deeply involved in my community through PartnerTulsa. We focus on STEM outreach and providing workforce access to those who need it most. My goal is to eventually expand Salem Innovation Solutions into East Africa. I want to build a regional hub for technical excellence in Uganda, providing high-level consulting and secure software development services. This scholarship would be an essential resource for me as I continue my education. It would allow me to reduce the number of hours I must spend on freelance work to cover my tuition. This extra time would enable me to focus more on my more complex academic projects and my community service work. My Christian faith drives my commitment to serving others through technology. Whether I am directing production at Victory Church or mentoring a local student in Tulsa, I strive to use my skills for a positive purpose. By winning this scholarship, I can further my goal of bringing technical innovation and security back to my home country.

I am a sophomore at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I study Information Systems and Technology. My path toward a career in technology was solidified during a security audit I performed on a platform called Skitbit. While examining the application, I found plaintext credentials for users stored directly in the browser's localStorage. Even more concerning was the client-side authentication middleware. I realized it could be entirely bypassed by any user who knew how to modify a simple URL parameter. This discovery was a turning point for me. It showed me the real-world consequences of poor security practices. I felt a deep responsibility to learn how to build systems that actually protect the people who use them. My long-term goal is to make a positive impact by improving digital infrastructure and accessibility. I currently operate my own consulting firm, Salem Innovation Solutions. We provide software development and technical consulting services to various clients in Tulsa. For example, I serve as the Live Production Director at Victory Church. In this role, I manage a complex AV and production infrastructure that handles large-scale events and broadcasts. I also enjoy working on hardware-level projects. I recently completed a CAN bus IoT project that used two ESP32 nodes communicating over SN65HVD230 transceivers. This project required deep dives into communication protocols and hardware integration. These experiences have given me a strong foundation in both software and hardware. One cause I am deeply committed to is increasing access to STEM education. I am actively involved with PartnerTulsa, where we focus on workforce development and providing technical skills to the community. This work is vital to me because I have seen firsthand how technology can change lives. Coming from Uganda as an F-1 international student, I understand the challenges of pursuing an education with limited financial assistance. I fund my tuition entirely through my work at Salem Innovation Solutions. This self-funding journey has taught me the importance of resilience and practical skills. I plan to take the skills I am learning in Oklahoma and bring them back to East Africa. My goal is to expand Salem Innovation Solutions into a regional hub for technical excellence. I want to provide the same high-level consulting and secure development services to businesses in Uganda that I provide in Tulsa. This expansion will allow me to hire and train local talent, supporting a new generation of technical leaders in my home country. My Christian faith serves as the foundation for my desire to give back. Whether I am directing live production at Victory Church or mentoring a young developer, I strive to use my talents to serve a purpose beyond myself. This scholarship would help me achieve these educational and career goals.

The most human moment in my technical work is when I show someone what their data actually means. I build AI automation tools for small businesses in Tulsa through Salem Innovation Solutions. Most of my clients have never had a system that tracked what was happening in their operations in real time. When I install something and then sit down with the owner to walk them through the first week of data, something shifts. They start asking questions I could not have predicted. The numbers are a new language, and watching someone begin to speak it is not a technology experience. It is a human one. That is the answer I keep coming back to when I think about what technology does to human connection. The risk is not that technology replaces human contact. The risk is that we design systems that process people instead of understanding them. The difference matters. A system that tracks table turnover at a restaurant treats customers as throughput. A system that helps an owner understand which hours her regulars prefer, and why, treats them as people whose patterns mean something. The technology is the same. The orientation is different. I am a sophomore at Oral Roberts University from Uganda, studying Information Systems and Technology. I also intern at PartnerTulsa doing STEM outreach with middle and high school students. The students I work with are not abstract future engineers. They are kids in Tulsa who have specific questions and specific fears about whether they belong in technical fields. What I have found is that the technology itself is almost never the barrier. The barrier is the relationship. When a student trusts that the person teaching them is actually paying attention to them, not just presenting content, everything changes. I cannot automate that. I also direct live production operations at Victory Church. The technical side of that work is about latency, camera positioning, audio mixing, and signal routing. The human side is that thousands of people show up to be in the same room together and have an experience that is not available on a screen. My job is to make the technical infrastructure invisible so the human experience can come through clearly. Every choice I make about camera angles and lighting is a choice about what people will feel and whether they will feel it together. The question of how technology preserves authentic human connection is not, in my view, a question about limiting technology. It is a question about what you are trying to do with it. I am building toward a company that will eventually operate in both the US and East Africa. One thing I know about the markets I want to serve is that relationships there carry more weight than in most places I have encountered. Business decisions are made in the context of community trust. A technology company that does not understand that will fail, not because the technology is bad but because it is disconnected from how people actually work. I think about this when I build. The systems I design have to solve a real problem for a real person who has relationships that shape what the problem actually is. If I lose sight of that, I am just building software. The goal is to build something that helps people do what they were already trying to do, which is usually to take care of something or someone they are connected to. Technology at its best makes more of human connection possible, not less. That requires the people who build it to keep asking whose connection, to what, and why it matters.

The honest answer is that I do not have the option of accumulating student loan debt and figuring it out later. I am here on an F-1 student visa from Uganda, which means federal financial aid is not available to me. The cost of attendance at Oral Roberts University is entirely my problem to solve, in real time. My solution has been Salem Innovation Solutions, a technology company I founded in Tulsa during my first year here. We build AI automation tools and web systems for local businesses. The clients are real: restaurants that need performance tracking systems they have never had, schools trying to reduce administrative overhead, small businesses that want to understand what is actually happening in their operations. I charge for that work. The revenue funds my tuition. That is not a passive arrangement. Running a company while enrolled full-time requires a level of discipline I did not fully understand before I started. I also intern at PartnerTulsa doing STEM outreach and direct live production operations at Victory Church. None of those commitments can be allowed to conflict with each other in ways that cost me clients or credit hours. The margin for error is narrow. The model is working, but it is not without risk. Client projects can run over scope. Slow periods in the business happen. I do not have a family financial cushion to fall back on when they do. What I have is the ability to find new clients, build new systems, and solve problems fast enough to keep the numbers right. The longer-term plan addresses this differently. Salem Innovation Solutions is not meant to stay the size it is now. I am building it toward a company that can operate in both the US and East Africa. East Africa has a real shortage of enterprise-grade technology services built for local institutions, and that is a gap I am positioned to close. A company that operates at that scale generates revenue I can use to pay off any remaining educational costs while building something that outlasts the debt itself. The reason I am pursuing this in a way that creates a company rather than just a freelance practice is that companies grow on their own momentum once the infrastructure is right. Freelancing pays the bills; a real company creates equity and sustained income. I am building the company now, while I am still in school, so that by the time I graduate the infrastructure is already in place. This scholarship would reduce the financial pressure that makes every semester a calculation. I am not operating on borrowed time in the sense of debt accumulating, but I am operating on tight margins that require everything to go right. Anything that gives me more room to operate gives me more ability to focus on building something that will outlast the next tuition payment.

The clearest answer to why I want a career in STEM is that I have already started one, and it is doing exactly what I hoped it would. I am a sophomore at Oral Roberts University from Uganda, studying Information Systems and Technology. I founded Salem Innovation Solutions in Tulsa in my first year, and we build AI automation tools and web systems for local businesses. One of my clients is a restaurant that now tracks performance metrics they had never measured before because they had no system for it. Another is a school trying to reduce the administrative overhead that eats into teaching time. The problems they bring me are not hypothetical. They are real operational gaps that cost real money and time, and fixing them with technology is what I do. That practical orientation shapes everything else. When I took on a security audit of Skitbit, a Next.js 14 platform, I found credentials stored in plaintext in localStorage and client-side authentication middleware that could be bypassed entirely by manipulating the URL. Documenting those vulnerabilities clearly enough that the development team could act on them required not just technical knowledge but the ability to communicate risk to people who needed to understand it, not just be told about it. That is a skill you develop by actually working on systems with real users. My technical work runs deeper than web applications. I built two ESP32 microcontrollers communicating over CAN bus for an IoT project that required three complete rewrites before the timing was stable. I built a LoRa radio messaging application on Raspberry Pi using pthreads and UART. I built an AI agent using LangGraph and Claude's API that autonomously navigates a learning management system. None of those came from coursework. They came from deciding I needed to understand something and staying with it until I did. The community piece of this question is inseparable from where I come from. My parents are missionaries in Uganda. I grew up watching the technology gap between East Africa and developed markets cost people in concrete, measurable ways: businesses operating blind without data systems, institutions exposed to attacks they had no tools to detect, engineers who could not find work that matched their skills because the infrastructure to hire them did not exist locally. My plan is to expand Salem Innovation Solutions into that market. Not as a charity and not as a subsidiary of a foreign company, but as a business that hires local engineers, builds systems designed for that context, and creates the kind of institutional knowledge that stays. I intern at PartnerTulsa doing STEM outreach with middle and high school students, and I understand that the bottleneck is not talent. It is access and infrastructure. A student in Kampala who has never been shown what is possible in technology cannot aim at what they cannot see. The degree gives me credibility in rooms where credibility matters. The work I am already doing gives me something to show when I get there. The community I am building toward is not abstract. It is specific people in a specific place with specific problems that technology can solve, if someone with the right training decides to show up and build the right things.

Selected paragraph from Plato's Republic, Book VII (Benjamin Jowett translation): "And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he's forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities." Plato is not describing the pleasure of learning. He is describing its cost. The prisoner in the cave does not walk willingly toward the light. He is dragged. He is held. He arrives at knowledge pained and irritated, temporarily blinded rather than immediately enlightened. This is the thesis: the ascent toward understanding is, by design, disorienting before it is clarifying, and Plato encodes in the physical details of this passage a precise account of what genuine education actually requires. The word "reluctantly" does significant work here. It tells us that the movement toward truth is not instinctive. The prisoner has spent his entire life reading shadows on a wall as reality. That is not ignorance he can shrug off. It is a complete perceptual world he has built, a coherent framework for understanding everything he has ever seen. To tell him it is wrong is not to offer him something better. It is first to take something away. The reluctance Plato names is the reluctance of someone being asked to surrender a working model of the world before the replacement has proven itself. The ascent itself is described as "steep and rugged." This is not incidental detail. Plato could have left the passage at the prisoner being dragged upward, but he specifies the difficulty of the terrain. The path toward understanding is not smooth. It resists. The prisoner is not only pulled toward something new; he is pulled against something physically hard. This is Plato insisting on the labor involved in real learning. There is no easy ascent. The effort is built into the geography. Then the prisoner arrives at the sun and cannot see. His eyes, adapted to the dim light of the cave, are overwhelmed by what he has been brought to witness. He is "dazzled." He cannot make out "what are now called realities." This is the most philosophically precise moment in the passage. The prisoner has reached the source of truth and it has, temporarily, made him less capable of seeing than he was in the cave. He was better at reading shadows than he is, right now, at reading light. Plato is describing the productive disorientation of genuine education, the period in which a person knows the old framework is wrong but cannot yet use the new one. The phrase "what are now called realities" is important. The word "now" signals that Plato is distinguishing between what things were called before the ascent and what they will be called after. There is a before and an after. The realities the prisoner could not see at the moment of arrival are the same realities he will eventually learn to name correctly. The temporary blindness is not failure. It is transition. What Plato understands, and what this passage captures precisely, is that education is not comfortable. It is not the gentle addition of new information to an existing framework. It is the disruption of that framework and the slow, painful building of a new one. The prisoner is not made happy by the ascent. He is made confused, then gradually capable of something he was not capable of before. The deeper argument of the allegory, which this passage sets up, is that the philosopher who reaches the sun is obligated to return to the cave. The discomfort of the ascent is not the end of the story. It is preparation for service. The one who has been dragged up the rugged path, who has been dazzled and temporarily blinded, who has slowly learned to see in the light, must go back down. The education was not for his benefit alone. I read this passage as someone who left Uganda at eighteen to study at a university in Oklahoma. The ascent has been steep and rugged in ways Plato would recognize. The moment of arriving somewhere and being temporarily blinded by its newness. The period of not being able to read the realities around you. The slow, effortful adjustment. What I hold onto is the obligation at the end of the allegory. The one who learns to see in the light goes back. That is the whole point of the ascent.

The legacy I want to create is a technology company that operates meaningfully in two places at once: Tulsa, Oklahoma, and East Africa. Not a charity. Not a nonprofit. A real business that employs engineers, solves actual problems, and builds the kind of local technical capacity that makes a region less dependent on outside help. I started Salem Innovation Solutions as a sophomore at Oral Roberts University because I could see a gap. Small businesses in Tulsa, churches, local nonprofits, were paying too much for technology that underdelivered. I built AI automation systems and web tools for a restaurant that now tracks performance metrics it had no visibility into before. I helped a church cut the cost of its broadcast operation by a significant margin. Those are not hypothetical outcomes. That is what happens when someone with the right technical skills shows up and actually engages. The business I hope to create one day is Salem at a larger scale, operating across two continents. East Africa is a region I know as home, not as a development opportunity. My parents are missionaries in Uganda. I grew up watching them build things for other people with no expectation of personal gain. What I saw was that good work, sustained over time, changes the conditions other people live in. I want to do that through technology. The talent is there in East Africa. The gap is access to technical infrastructure and capital. I have a specific plan for how to close it, starting with what I am already building in Tulsa. The way I shine my light right now is less dramatic but just as intentional. I intern at PartnerTulsa doing STEM outreach in communities underrepresented in tech. That means showing up at schools, running workshops, and making sure that students who have never touched a development environment leave knowing they can. I know what it feels like to be one of very few people who look like me in a technical room. My job at PartnerTulsa is to make the entry point feel less impossible for the next person. I also direct live production at Victory Church every week. Audio, video, broadcast operations. It is not a small role. It requires showing up reliably, solving problems in real time, and being accountable when something goes wrong in front of a congregation. I took it on because it needed doing and because I am capable of doing it well. Legacy, to me, is not a monument. It is a set of conditions you leave behind that make it easier for the next person to do something meaningful. The technical skills I am building at ORU, the company I am running in Tulsa, and the communities I am serving right now are all part of the same work. This scholarship helps me stay on that path without the constant financial pressure of being an international student without access to federal aid.

My definition of the American Dream is not a house or a salary figure. It is access to the connection between effort and outcome. In a lot of countries, that connection is broken before you start. Your family background, your ethnicity, where you grew up — they determine more than your work does. The promise here, imperfect as the execution often is, is that work actually matters. I came to the United States from Uganda on an F-1 visa to study Information Systems and Technology at Oral Roberts University. I do not have access to federal financial aid. Before my first semester started, I landed a live production contract at Victory Church in Tulsa to fund part of it. I had never managed audio and video at that scale. I figured it out because I had to. That is what the American Dream looks like from my position: not given access, but real access if you show up and do the work. In my first year I founded Salem Innovation Solutions, a technology company that builds AI automation tools and web systems for small businesses in Tulsa. A restaurant client now tracks performance data they had no visibility into before. A church I built broadcast infrastructure for now operates at a fraction of its previous cost. These are not theoretical wins. They are real clients with real problems I solved. I also work as a STEM intern at PartnerTulsa, doing outreach in communities that are underrepresented in technology. That work is personal. I know what it is like to be an outsider in a technical space. I know the moment when something clicks and a problem stops feeling impossible. My job is to give other people more of those moments. The American Dream, to me, means that those moments are not reserved for people who already had advantages. It means that a student from Uganda who shows up with skills and a willingness to work hard can build something here that creates opportunity for others. It means that what I build in Tulsa can eventually fund what I build in East Africa, where my parents serve as missionaries and where the gap between technical talent and technical infrastructure is enormous. I am not naive about the obstacles. Being a non-citizen without federal aid access makes every semester a calculation. But the calculation is possible, and the outcome is real. That is what I came here for. That is what I am building. The American Dream, as I define it, is the belief that the work you do here can matter beyond where you started — and I am trying to prove that is true. This scholarship helps me stay on that path without the math getting in the way.

My parents are missionaries in Uganda. I grew up watching them move to a country that was not their own and spend their lives building things for other people with no expectation of personal return. That is not an abstract lesson about generosity. It is the most concrete model of how to live that I have ever seen, and my faith is inseparable from it. When I came to the United States to study at Oral Roberts University, I did not come with a financial safety net. I came on an F-1 visa with no access to federal aid. Before classes started I landed a live production contract at Victory Church in Tulsa. I had never directed live audio and video at that scale, but I knew how to show up, do the work honestly, and be accountable when something went wrong. Those are not skills I learned in a class. They came from watching my parents operate under much harder conditions for much higher stakes. God has helped me in my life primarily by giving me a framework for why work matters. I did not found Salem Innovation Solutions because starting a company seemed impressive. I founded it because I saw a real gap: small businesses in Tulsa that needed technical infrastructure and could not afford it. The instinct to look for that gap and fill it rather than waiting for a more comfortable opportunity came directly from my faith. You do not wait for ideal conditions. You use what you have where you are. My faith also gives me a longer time horizon than most career planning assumes. The technology company I want to build is not just for Tulsa. The long-term plan is to extend Salem Innovation Solutions into East Africa, hiring local engineers and building software for local markets. My parents are in Uganda. I understand that region as home. The engineering talent there is real. What is missing is capital, infrastructure, and locally-led companies. I want to help build those. That goal does not fit neatly into a five-year career plan, but it fits into a life oriented around service. In my current career, faith keeps me honest about what I am building and for whom. I study Information Systems and Technology at ORU and I apply those skills directly: I did a full security audit of a Next.js platform and found critical vulnerabilities. I built an AI agent that autonomously navigates a learning management system using LangGraph and Claude's API. Each of those projects required doing difficult, careful work without shortcuts, which is what integrity in any field requires. Faith is not a separate part of my life that I apply to career decisions when convenient. It is the frame through which I understand what a career is for. This scholarship honors people who came to the US with nothing and built something real through hard work and integrity. That is the same story I am trying to write, just in a different time and a different field.

The adversity I want to describe is financial, not dramatic, and I think that is worth saying upfront. I came to Oral Roberts University from Uganda on an F-1 visa. International students on F-1 status cannot access federal financial aid. That means every dollar I needed for tuition, housing, and basic living costs had to come from somewhere else. My first semester, that somewhere else was a live production contract I landed at Victory Church in Tulsa before classes started. I managed audio, video, and broadcast operations for a congregation that needed reliable technical work every week. I had never directed live production at that scale before. I figured it out quickly because I had no other option. That contract paid for part of my first semester. The rest I covered through other work, and before the year was out I had founded Salem Innovation Solutions, a technology company in Tulsa that builds AI automation tools and web systems for local businesses. A restaurant I work with now tracks performance data they had no visibility into before. A church I built broadcast infrastructure for now runs on a fraction of what it used to cost. These are real clients, real deliverables, real income. The adversity shaped me in a specific way. When you cannot rely on a financial safety net, you stop treating uncertainty as a reason to wait. You figure out what the actual problem is, find the fastest credible path to solving it, and you move. That is how I approach engineering now too. It is how I built an AI agent using LangGraph and Claude's API. It is how I debugged two ESP32 microcontrollers communicating over CAN bus through three failed versions before the fourth one worked. You do not quit because something is hard. You work the problem until it is not hard anymore. The advice I would give to someone facing the same circumstances is probably not what they want to hear: do not wait for the situation to improve before you start. The situation is not going to improve first. You improve it by building something, and the building teaches you what you actually need to know. I am still in that situation. I am still an international student without federal aid access, still running a company to fund my education, still figuring it out semester by semester. It has made me faster, more resourceful, and significantly less afraid of problems that look large from the outside. I do not know if I would trade it for an easier path, because I am not sure an easier path would have built what this one has. This scholarship is a real reduction in that financial pressure, and I am grateful for the chance to apply.

The project I want to describe took me three separate attempts and about two weeks of confused debugging before it worked. I wanted two ESP32 microcontrollers to communicate reliably over CAN bus using SN65HVD230 transceivers. CAN bus is the protocol used in automotive systems and industrial equipment. Documentation for hobbyist implementations with these specific transceivers is scattered and often wrong. The first version dropped messages under load. The second had timing issues I could not explain for two days straight. The third version worked, and by then I understood exactly why each version before it had failed. What that process taught me was not just how CAN bus works. It taught me how to read a datasheet properly — how to find the one line that actually matters and then test that assumption before building anything else on top of it. The discipline of slowing down to verify before stacking more code on an untested foundation now runs through everything I build. I am a sophomore at Oral Roberts University from Uganda, studying Information Systems and Technology. Outside of the CAN bus project, I built a LoRa radio messaging app on Raspberry Pi using the RYLR998 module, pthreads, UART, and AT commands. I built an AI agent that autonomously navigates a learning management system using LangGraph and Claude's API. I run Salem Innovation Solutions, a company in Tulsa that builds automation systems and web tools for local businesses. A restaurant client now tracks performance metrics they had no visibility into before. A church broadcast operation now runs on a fraction of what it used to cost. Each of those projects started the same way: I wanted to understand something that was not fully documented or explained, so I built my way toward understanding it. That is what curiosity looks like to me in practice. It is not excitement about ideas. It is stubbornness about a problem until the problem makes sense. The way I want to make a positive impact is geographic. My parents are missionaries in Uganda. East Africa has growing technology infrastructure but a shortage of local engineers who can build and maintain it. The problem-solving approach I have developed — go deep, verify assumptions, understand before you move on — is exactly what that kind of work requires. You cannot build reliable software infrastructure for emerging markets by skipping steps or relying on abstractions you do not fully understand. Salem Innovation Solutions is already operating in Tulsa. The long-term plan is to extend it into East Africa, hiring locally and building systems that serve communities from the inside. Tinkering is how I got here. It is also how I plan to build what comes next.

I came to the United States from Uganda on an F-1 visa to study Information Systems and Technology at Oral Roberts University. Federal financial aid was not available to me. I funded my first semester by landing a production technology contract at Victory Church in Tulsa, and I immediately started building a company to keep generating income while staying in school. That is not a story I tell for sympathy. It is just the reality of what it took to be here. My interest in education is not abstract. I care about learning because I have seen what technical knowledge lets you build. At ORU, I study networking, systems administration, database management, and cybersecurity. Outside of class, I apply those skills directly. I did a full security audit of a Next.js 14 platform called Skitbit and found credentials stored in plaintext in localStorage and authentication middleware that could be bypassed entirely. I built two ESP32 nodes communicating over CAN bus for an IoT diagnostics project. I built an AI agent that autonomously navigates a learning management system using LangGraph and Claude's API. None of those came from a textbook. They came from taking a problem seriously until I understood it. I run Salem Innovation Solutions, a technology company I founded in Tulsa. My clients are local businesses. A restaurant I work with now tracks performance metrics they had no visibility into before. A church I built broadcast infrastructure for now operates on a fraction of what it used to cost. These are real results for real clients, and they fund my ability to stay in school and keep building. My goals for the future are geographic as much as technical. I want Salem Innovation Solutions to operate in East Africa as well as the United States. My parents are missionaries in Uganda. I know that region not as a market opportunity but as home. The engineering talent there is real. What is missing is capital, technical infrastructure, and locally owned software. I want to build toward closing that gap by training engineers, hiring locally, and building products that serve those communities from the inside. Education is the foundation that makes all of this possible. My degree gives me depth and access to resources that accelerate what I can build. This scholarship gives me more room to focus on that work without splitting my attention between school and income generation as sharply as I currently do. That directly improves the quality of what I produce, and the quality of what I produce determines whether any of the larger goals are realistic.

The first time I understood what information technology actually meant, I was not in a classroom. I was debugging a hardware communication protocol at midnight, reading CAN bus datasheets and tracing signal lines on two ESP32 boards until the nodes finally talked to each other. That experience shaped how I think about the field. IT is not a profession where you learn a stack and apply it. It is a discipline where you keep going deeper until you understand why something works. I am a sophomore at Oral Roberts University from Uganda, studying Information Systems and Technology with a concentration in cybersecurity. Outside of class, I run Salem Innovation Solutions, a technology company I founded in Tulsa. My clients are local businesses. A restaurant I work with now tracks performance metrics they had no visibility into before. A church I built broadcast infrastructure for now runs on a fraction of what it used to cost. Both projects required me to understand not just the technical stack but the actual problem the client needed solved. The area of IT that interests me most is where security and systems engineering overlap. I did a full security audit of a Next.js 14 platform called Skitbit and found credentials stored in plaintext in localStorage and client-side middleware that could be bypassed without authentication. Those are the kinds of flaws that look invisible until someone exploits them. Finding them required reading the application logic carefully, not just running a scanner. I also built an AI agent that autonomously navigates a learning management system using LangGraph and Claude's API. The agent uses Stagehand for browser interaction and handles authenticated sessions, form submission, and page navigation without human input. Building it forced me to think carefully about what happens when an automated system has access to real accounts and real data. The boundary between a useful tool and a security liability is thin, and writing that agent made me understand it in a way that no lecture could. Outside of personal projects, I do IT-related work at ORU through coursework covering networking, systems administration, and database management. Most of my deepest learning has happened outside formal clubs, in the context of building real systems for real clients or exploring technology I wanted to understand from the inside. The piece of IT I want to contribute to long term is infrastructure in East Africa. My parents are missionaries in Uganda, and I know that region as home. The technical talent there is real. What is missing is local engineering capacity and locally owned software. I want Salem Innovation Solutions to eventually operate there, building for those markets with people who come from them. My education at ORU is what makes that a realistic goal. This scholarship helps me finish it.

I grew up in Uganda watching what happened when communities did not have access to technical infrastructure. The systems that controlled access to information, money, and services were almost always built by people who did not live there, and when those systems broke or needed to change, the community had no one local who could fix them. That observation is the reason I am pursuing a degree in Information Systems and Technology, and it is the reason I founded Salem Innovation Solutions while still in my sophomore year at Oral Roberts University. What drives my work is a specific kind of dissatisfaction with how things are. I do not want to consume technology. I want to build it, understand it at the hardware and software level, and own the systems my community depends on. That thinking led me to build two ESP32 nodes communicating over a CAN bus network for an IoT project, because I wanted to understand the protocol at the signal level. It led me to do a full security audit of a Next.js platform called Skitbit, where I found credentials stored in plaintext in localStorage and a middleware bypass that exposed every authenticated user. Neither of those projects was assigned to me. I did them because the gap between what I could do and what I understood was something I could not leave alone. At Salem Innovation Solutions, I build AI automation tools and web systems for small businesses in Tulsa. Most of our clients are minority-owned businesses that have been operating without real technical infrastructure. What I do for them is not glamorous: systems that track performance metrics, automate repetitive processes, and handle customer-facing workflows. But the people I work with are building real things in real communities, and having reliable technology underneath that work changes what they can do. That is the kind of service I believe in. My degree in Information Systems is the foundation I need to move from building local client work toward the larger goal. I am working toward a specialization in cybersecurity, specifically in embedded and industrial systems security. Most of the infrastructure being built in East Africa right now, from mobile money platforms to connected agricultural sensors, is being deployed without serious security architecture. There are not enough people with the technical depth to do that work, and I want to be one of the people who can. This scholarship matters to me because it is designed for Black learners doing serious work across different pathways. My path has not been linear. It has been coursework and a company and hardware projects and security audits running in parallel, because that is the only way I know how to learn. The financial support would give me more room to focus on the technical depth I need to get where I am going: building cybersecurity infrastructure in the markets that need it most.

I grew up in Kampala, Uganda, in a household where education was treated as the path out of dependence. My father worked as a government officer and my mother ran a small business. Neither of them had university access when they were young, so education was not abstract in our home. It was the thing you did so your options would be wider than theirs had been. I came to Oral Roberts University because of scholarship availability and the practical reality that the US had the strongest cybersecurity programs accessible to me. I am studying Information Systems and Technology and founded Salem Innovation Solutions in Tulsa, a technology company that builds AI tools and web systems for local businesses. Running that company while carrying a full course load is the challenge I live inside every week. The hardest part of being an international student is not the coursework. It is the financial structure. Nonresident students do not qualify for most federal aid, which means tuition gaps get filled by work, by scholarships, by bootstrapping a business with limited time and no safety net. What I learned from that pressure is that you get very clear about what matters when the margin for error is zero. Every client project at Salem has to generate real value. Every class has to build something I can use. There is no space for things that do not count. The person who has most shaped how I think is my uncle, who taught himself to code in Uganda in the late 1990s when internet access there was barely a concept. He did it on borrowed time at a university computer lab, reading whatever documentation he could access. He never had a formal technology career because the infrastructure for it did not exist in Uganda at the time. But watching him figure things out without a roadmap or a support system showed me that the skill and the discipline come first, and the opportunity either follows or you build it yourself. That is the model I am working from. My plan after graduation is to grow Salem Innovation Solutions into a company that operates in both the US and East Africa. The cybersecurity gap in Uganda and the surrounding region is significant. Businesses moving to digital payments and cloud systems are doing so without real security posture. I want to be the company doing that security work in that market, staffed by local engineers who stay and build careers in the region rather than emigrating to find opportunity elsewhere. That is the specific problem I am working toward, and this scholarship is part of how I get there.

Service is not a concept I learned from a textbook. When I was growing up in Uganda, I watched my community's access to information and economic opportunity depend on whether a few individuals were willing to put in work that had no immediate reward. The people who built schools in underserved areas, who taught computing skills in communities that had no formal infrastructure for it, were practicing a form of service that looked ordinary from the outside but held entire futures together. That understanding traveled with me when I came to the United States. I came to Oral Roberts University as a nonresident student from Uganda, and I immediately saw a version of the same gap. The African diaspora in the US has built remarkable communities, but the technology infrastructure those communities depend on is almost entirely owned by people outside of them. When a small African-owned restaurant in Tulsa needs a point-of-sale system, they buy a product built by a company with no connection to their community. When an African immigrant-owned business needs a website or an automation tool, they hire a contractor who does not understand the context and does not stay after the check clears. I founded Salem Innovation Solutions in Tulsa to start addressing that gap at a local level. We build AI automation tools and web systems for small businesses, and a part of our client base includes minority-owned businesses that previously had no access to this kind of technical support. That is a small intervention, but it follows the same logic that drives Sgt. Ware's legacy: you see what needs to be done, and you do it. You do not wait for someone else to hand you a program. The most critical reform I see for the African diaspora in the US is ownership of technical infrastructure. Right now, most African diaspora communities consume technology rather than build it. That needs to change through investment in STEM education pipelines that reach students in middle school, not just at the college level. The talent is there. What is missing is the connection between early exposure to technical work and real career pathways that stay in and serve the community. The second reform is entrepreneurship access. African immigrant and African American entrepreneurs face structural barriers to capital that are well-documented. The policy solution is not complicated: expand access to small business lending for minority-owned tech companies, and create incubator programs that are genuinely connected to African diaspora networks rather than generic programs that serve everyone and end up serving no one in particular. The stakeholders who need to be involved are universities, because they hold the pipeline. Tech companies also need to be at the table, because they have hiring power and capital. And organizations like the United African Organization need to be central, because they have the trust of the communities that would actually benefit. None of these actors can do it alone. Universities produce talent but have no mechanism to ensure it stays in the community. Tech companies have capital but no authentic connection to these neighborhoods. Organizations like UAO have the trust and the understanding, but need institutional partners to scale. What I take from Sgt. Ware's story is that the service which matters is the kind you commit to before you know how it ends. He served this country knowing the risk. I am building a business and pursuing a technical education knowing that neither is guaranteed to succeed. But the commitment is what makes everything else possible. Showing up for your community before the outcome is certain is not just admirable. It is the only kind of reform that actually changes anything long term.

My computer science goal is specific: I want to specialize in embedded systems security. That direction came from a project I built at Oral Roberts University where I designed two ESP32 nodes communicating over a CAN bus network. CAN bus is the protocol most vehicles and industrial systems still use to communicate internally, and almost nobody is securing it properly. When I started looking into the security implications of that work, I realized I had found a gap that very few people with both hardware and software skills are positioned to fill. I also run Salem Innovation Solutions, a technology company I founded in Tulsa. Right now we build AI automation tools and web systems for local businesses. I do security audits alongside that work. One audit I did on a Next.js 14 platform called Skitbit turned up credentials stored in plaintext in localStorage and a client-side middleware bypass that would have exposed every authenticated user on the platform. That audit shaped how I think about what software actually needs to be safe, not just functional. My non-computer science goal is a business one. I want Salem Innovation Solutions to eventually operate in East Africa. Uganda's tech sector is growing, but almost all the software running local businesses there is built and maintained by foreign companies or contractors. That creates dependency. The people who understand the systems are not local, which means that when something breaks or needs to change, the business has to go back to the foreign vendor. I want to change that by building a local team, training engineers in Uganda, and winning contracts that require Ugandan talent to maintain. Where these goals intersect is in cybersecurity infrastructure for East African businesses. Right now, most small and mid-size businesses in Uganda that are moving to digital payments and cloud-based operations have almost no security posture. They are adopting mobile money platforms, SaaS tools, and internet-connected hardware without anyone doing the work of threat modeling or vulnerability assessment. My plan is to be the company that does that work in that market. The technical skills I am building now, including embedded systems, web security, and AI agent development, are exactly what a company like that would need. Lyndsey Scott's work is interesting to me because she did not just build a career in two fields. She built things that required both. That is the version of computer science I want to practice: not coding in isolation, but using technical skills to build something with a real shape in the world. Salem Innovation Solutions is the business. The security specialization is the technical foundation. East Africa is the long-term direction. This scholarship puts me one step closer to having the resources to make all three of those things real at the same time.

Security became real for me not in a classroom but while reviewing someone else's code. I was doing a full audit of a Next.js 14 platform called Skitbit. What I found was worse than I expected. Credentials were stored in plaintext in localStorage. The client-side middleware that was supposed to protect authenticated routes could be bypassed entirely by anyone who knew to look. These were not minor issues. They were the kind of problems that could expose every user on the platform. I am a sophomore at Oral Roberts University from Uganda, majoring in Information Systems and Technology. My background is in building systems across the stack. I have worked with ESP32 microcontrollers on CAN bus networks, built LoRa radio apps on Raspberry Pi using UART, and created AI agents that interact with web applications autonomously. Security comes into every layer of that work. You cannot build an autonomous AI agent and not think hard about what happens when it has access to authenticated sessions. That audit changed how I approach every project. Before Skitbit, I thought about security as something you added at the end. After it, I understood that security is a design decision you make before you write the first line of code. I started applying that thinking to Salem Innovation Solutions, the technology company I run in Tulsa. Every client system I review now gets a structured threat model before we touch the code. I am also Black and from Uganda. There are very few people who look like me in information security. That is a problem not because representation is nice to have, but because the people who get hired to find vulnerabilities will inevitably bring their own mental models of what an attacker looks like and what they will try. Diverse teams catch more because they think differently. When I am in a room doing a security review, I bring a perspective shaped by growing up in a country where mobile money is the primary financial system and where the threat landscape looks completely different from what most American textbooks cover. My plan is to continue building technical depth in both offensive and defensive security while growing Salem Innovation Solutions. I am currently studying for my Security+ certification and working through practical labs on web application vulnerabilities. I want to eventually specialize in embedded systems security, partly because of my CAN bus work and partly because that space is underpopulated by people who actually understand the hardware. Long-term, I want to bring that expertise back to East Africa, where cybersecurity infrastructure is growing fast but local practitioners are still rare. Uganda has a young tech sector and almost no homegrown security talent. This scholarship supports that path in a direct way, and I do not take that lightly.