I grew up between cultures, and one of the earliest things I noticed was how differently technology shaped what people could do depending on where they lived. That observation stuck with me long before I had the vocabulary to do anything about it. My first real hands-on experience with IT came through volunteer work at a temple, where I ended up taking over the entire technical side at seventeen, building and maintaining the website, setting up a donation system using PayPal and Zelle configured to route payments automatically and notify the owner instantly, and handling event marketing and logistics. Nobody assigned it to me. I saw what was missing and figured it out. That experience is what made IT feel less like a subject and more like a tool I actually wanted to master. I'm now an incoming undergraduate at UW-Eau Claire studying information systems, which sits exactly at the intersection I've always been drawn to where technology meets the real problems people and organizations are trying to solve. Outside of my coursework, I'm currently co-developing a note-taking application with a friend that we've built for both mobile and web. The app implements the Zettelkasten method, a knowledge management system that links related ideas across notes so that as you take notes on new topics, the app surfaces relevant notes you've taken in the past. It also includes an AI-powered chatbot that answers questions based specifically on your own notes, a feature that lets you add outside sources and automatically identifies gaps between what those sources cover and what you already know, and a quiz mode that tests your knowledge on topics you've been studying. We're building it for students because we've both felt firsthand how much gets lost between classes when there's no system connecting what you're learning. Building it has pushed me into areas I wouldn't have reached in a classroom alone, working across mobile and web platforms, thinking through how AI retrieves and relates information, and designing for a real user experience rather than just a project grade. My extracurricular involvement includes years of community service through the temple, where I organized events, assisted with prayer services, ran food drives, and kept operations running for a community that depended on that space. I also participated in the Escalera Club, a college and career readiness program with weekly meetings focused on planning and peer discussion. Academically, I completed a STEM early college dual enrollment program on the Dean's List every semester, earning college credits alongside my high school diploma. The barriers this scholarship was created to address are real to me. As an international student, I have no access to federal financial aid, and the full cost of attendance falls on a sponsor and my family abroad, who are already stretched. IT felt inaccessible for a long time not because I lacked the curiosity but because I lacked the resources and the mentorship. I've been building both from scratch. This scholarship would help make sure that momentum doesn't stop.

I didn't choose information systems because it was practical. I chose it because of a problem I couldn't stop thinking about. At seventeen I was volunteering at a temple where the owners were older and had no one handling the technical side. I built their website; set up a donation system using PayPal and Zelle configured to route payments automatically and notify the owner the moment anything came in; and managed everything from event marketing to logistics. Once the system was running, I kept thinking about the layer underneath it. How did the notification know when to fire? How did the system know where to route the money? And who decided how all of that connected? I didn't have the vocabulary for it yet. I just knew I wanted to understand how it worked. That question led me to STEM and has driven everything since. I'm pursuing information systems with a planned computer science minor at UW-Eau Claire, focused on the intersection of AI and enterprise systems. What draws me to this specifically is the way a single input can move through a system and create effects three layers removed from where it started, effects nobody sees until something breaks. I want to understand those connections deeply enough to build systems that don't break and to fix the ones that do. Longer term, I want to consult on enterprise technology across industries, bringing technical knowledge to organizations that need it, including the ones serving communities where technology hasn't reached yet. I grew up between cultures and watched early on how unevenly distributed technology was and how much that gap cost people. That observation never left me, and it shapes what I want to do with this degree. The adversity I've overcome is less dramatic than some stories, but it has been real and consistent. I came to the United States as an international student on an F1 visa, which means no federal financial aid, no work authorization during high school, and the full weight of tuition and living expenses falling on a sponsor and my family abroad, who are already supporting my brother studying in another country. I adjusted to a new country largely on my own, without the safety nets most students have, while maintaining a full academic load. I finished my STEM Early College dual enrollment program on the Dean's List every semester, earning college credits alongside high school credits while managing real responsibilities outside of school, including years of hands-on volunteer work. I wasn't doing it because it was easy. I was doing it because I understood what was at stake and I didn't have the option of not showing up. What drives me is simple. I come from a background where opportunities like this are not guaranteed, and I've watched too many people with real ability get stopped not by lack of talent but by lack of access. I want to be someone who builds the kind of systems that change that, and I want to do it from a foundation strong enough to last. This scholarship is part of building that foundation.

I didn't start coding because I wanted to be a software engineer. I started because there was a problem in front of me, and code was the tool that solved it. At seventeen I was volunteering at a temple where the owners were older and had no technical support. I built and maintained their website; set up a donation system using PayPal and Zelle configured to route payments automatically and notify the owner instantly; and handled everything from event promotion to logistics. Nobody assigned it to me. I just saw what needed doing and figured it out. That experience taught me something I've carried since that code is most useful when it's in service of something bigger than the code itself. My computer science goals are built around that same instinct. I'm pursuing Information Systems at UW-Eau Claire with plans to add a CS minor because I want the technical depth to understand not just how to use systems but how to build and improve them. I've worked through Java and Python, and I want to go deeper into data structures, algorithms, and eventually the programming side of AI and enterprise systems. The goal isn't to become someone who codes for its own sake. It's to become someone who can walk into a broken or underbuilt system and know exactly where to start. My non-CS goals are where things get more personal. I grew up between cultures and watched early on how unevenly technology was distributed; the same tools that made organizations run smoothly in one place were completely inaccessible somewhere else. That gap bothered me then, and it still does. I'm also genuinely passionate about community service, not as a resume line but as something I've done consistently because I believe showing up for people matters. I spent years at that temple not just on the technical side but organizing events, assisting with prayers, running food drives, and being present for a community that gave me a sense of home when I was still figuring out a new country. Where these goals combine is the part I find most interesting. Most organizations doing real community work, temples, nonprofits, and local service groups are running on outdated tools or nothing at all, not because they don't care but because nobody with the right knowledge ever sat down with them. I want to be someone who does that, who brings technical skills directly into the spaces that need them most. Longer term, I want to consult on technology for businesses and organizations across industries, including the ones that exist to serve people rather than profit from them. Being someone in this field who came from an underrepresented background, who knows what it looks like when technology hasn't reached a community yet, changes what problems you notice and what solutions you actually build. I'm not just a coder with a scholarship application. I'm someone who has already been using technical skills to serve others since before I had the formal education to back it up. This scholarship would help me build the foundation to do that at a much larger scale.

I didn't start out thinking of myself as an entrepreneur. I just kept noticing problems that nobody else was fixing and deciding to fix them. When I was in high school, I went door to door in my neighborhood offering to mow lawns, found my own clients, set my own schedule, and handled everything myself. It was small, but it was mine. Around the same time I was volunteering at a temple where the owners were older and had no technical infrastructure set up for anything. No website, no way to accept donations online, no system for promoting events. I built all of it, not because anyone asked me to but because I could see what was missing and I had enough curiosity to figure out how to fill the gap. Looking back, both of those experiences were entrepreneurial before I had the word for it. I wasn't waiting for someone to hand me a role. I was just building what needed to exist. That instinct is what I want to turn into something larger. I'm studying information systems with a minor in AI, and the business I want to build one day is an AI and data solutions company focused on helping organizations that are currently underserved by technology, small businesses, nonprofits, and community institutions, the kinds of places that need better systems but don't have the budget or the connections to access them. There is an enormous gap between what enterprise technology can do and what most small organizations are actually running on, and I want to build something that closes that gap in a practical and affordable way. Not a product for Fortune 500 companies. Something built for the organizations that are doing real work with limited resources and deserve tools that actually work for them. The legacy I want to create is rooted in access. I grew up watching how differently technology impacted people depending on where they lived and what resources they had around them. I came to this country as an international student with no financial safety net, figured out how to build things from scratch, and made the dean's list every semester while doing it. I don't say that to impress anyone. I say it because it tells you something about how I operate when the path isn't laid out for me. I find a way. That's the quality I want to carry into everything I build, and it's the quality I want the people who work with me one day to be able to count on. The way I shine my light is simple. I show up for people who need something built, and I don't leave until it works. I did it at seventeen mowing lawns, and I did it at the temple, and I plan to keep doing it at a much larger scale. That's the business. That's the legacy.

There was a period after I first arrived in the United States where everything felt uncertain at once. I was adjusting to a new country, navigating a school system I hadn't grown up in, and carrying the quiet pressure of knowing how much my parents had given up to get me here. They were supporting me from abroad while simultaneously supporting my brother studying in another country, and there was no real financial cushion for any of us. I couldn't work legally. I didn't have many people around me yet. Some days the weight of it was genuinely hard to carry. What I had was the temple. I kept showing up there even when I had every reason not to, when school was demanding and I was tired and I still had my own things to figure out. I helped organize events, assisted with prayers, handled the technical and logistical work that kept things running, and showed up for community gatherings even when I was the one who could have used a break. Nobody asked me to keep coming. I just did, because it was the one place where I felt useful and connected at the same time and because the people there needed the help regardless of what I was dealing with personally. What I learned from that period is something I didn't fully understand until I was on the other side of it. Giving doesn't require having everything figured out first. I used to think you had to be stable before you could show up for others, that kindness was something you offered from a place of fullness. What I found was the opposite. Showing up for the temple community during one of the harder stretches of my own life was part of what got me through it. The act of being useful to someone else gave me something to hold onto when everything around me felt unsteady. I also became more aware of what other people around me were quietly carrying. The older woman who needed someone to set up the donation system wasn't just dealing with a technical problem. She was trying to keep something alive that mattered deeply to her community, and she didn't have the tools or the knowledge to do it alone. Recognizing that shifted how I thought about my role, not just at the temple but in general. There are people everywhere trying to maintain something important with limited resources, and most of them just need someone to sit down and help. That is the kind of contribution I want to keep making. I am pursuing information systems and AI because I believe technology, when it is actually accessible and properly applied, changes what small organizations and underserved communities can do. The same instinct that kept me showing up at the temple during a hard year is the same one that will take me back to communities like it with better tools and more knowledge. I come from a background where resources were never guaranteed. That is not a limitation I carry with resentment. It is a reminder of who I am building this for.

Faith has never been something I kept separate from the rest of my life. It has always been in the background of everything, shaping how I show up, how I think about my responsibilities, and why I believe that the things I do matter beyond just myself. Growing up, I watched my parents live that out. They didn't preach about it. They just demonstrated it consistently, in the way they treated people, in the sacrifices they made quietly and without complaint, and in the belief they held onto that education was worth whatever it cost. That belief became mine too. Coming to the United States was harder than I expected. I was adjusting to a new country, a new system, and the weight of knowing how much my parents had given up to make this possible. My father and mother are supporting me from abroad while also supporting my brother, who is studying in another country. There is no margin for things to go wrong. That reality sits with me every day, and there are moments when it is genuinely heavy. What kept me grounded during the hardest stretches of adjusting was faith, specifically the community I found at a temple where I volunteered. Walking in on a Saturday morning, the smell of incense in the air, the sound of prayers I had grown up hearing—it was the first place in this country that felt like it recognized me. It gave me somewhere to belong while I was still figuring everything else out. That sense of belonging translated into something I didn't expect: clarity about what I was working toward. Faith gave me purpose beyond the degree. It reminded me that I wasn't just studying for myself; I was building something that my parents had invested in, that my community had made room for, and that I had a responsibility to make count. That kept me disciplined in a way that pure ambition alone couldn't. When I finished my STEM Early College program on the Dean's List every semester, it wasn't because everything was easy. It was because I had something to stay consistent for, and faith was a big part of what held that together. My parents are the other part. They never told me education was optional. They showed me, through everything they did and gave up, that it was the thing worth building a life around. My mother especially carried a quiet insistence that we could do more than the circumstances around us suggested. I think about that a lot now, sitting in a country far from home, preparing to start something I know they are proud of even when things are hard. I want to finish this not just for myself but for them and for the version of this story that ends well. Going forward, I want to use what I'm building in information systems and AI to make a real difference in organizations that serve communities, in places where technology hasn't reached yet, and in any room where someone needs a person who understands both the technical and the human side of a problem. Faith taught me that those two things are never actually separate. You take care of people because it's right, and you use whatever skills you have to do it better. That's what I'm here for.

I didn't set out to build anything. I just noticed a problem nobody was fixing. The temple I volunteered at was losing donations because the process was too complicated; people wanted to give but didn't know how, and the owners were older and didn't have anyone to figure it out for them. So I started looking into it. No instructions, no one to ask, just me reading documentation and testing configurations until something worked. What I built wasn't complicated by any professional standard. I connected PayPal and Zelle to a dedicated temple account and configured the routing so that every incoming donation triggered an automatic notification to the owner. But getting there took longer than I expected. I'd set something up, test it, find out it didn't behave the way I thought it would, take it apart, and start again. There were a few hours in there where I was genuinely unsure it was going to work. And then it did. A person across the city tapped their phone, money moved, an account updated, and someone got notified, all without anyone in the middle manually doing anything. That moment of watching something I built actually function the way I intended it to is one I haven't forgotten. What I remember most about that process wasn't the satisfaction of finishing. It was the part in the middle where I didn't know the answer yet and had to keep going anyway. That's the part I've come to recognize as the most important habit I have. I don't need everything mapped out before I start. I need to understand the problem clearly enough to take a first step, and then I figure out the next one from there. That approach has shaped how I think about almost everything since. I'm pursuing information systems with a minor in AI, partly because of what that experience taught me. The temple system followed a simple logic: a transaction triggers a route, a route updates a record, and a record notifies a person. What I've come to understand is that the same logic runs enterprise systems at a scale I can barely imagine and that when nobody understands how those systems are connected, things break in ways that are hard to trace. I want to be someone who can trace them. Not because it's technically interesting, though it is, but because organizations that serve communities, nonprofits, temples, and local institutions are often running on systems nobody ever properly set up for them. The skills I'm building are the same ones that help places like that function better. The person this scholarship honors sounds like someone who understood something I've come to believe too: that curiosity applied to real problems is one of the most useful things a person can develop. You don't need a lab or a budget or a title. You need a problem worth solving and enough persistence to stay with it past the point where it stops being easy. That's what I was doing at seventeen in that temple. It's what I plan to keep doing.

When I think about impact, I don't think about it in the abstract. I think about a Saturday morning at a temple, incense still in the air from the night before, an older woman trying to explain to me that people wanted to donate but didn't know how. She didn't have anyone to figure it out for her. So I did. I was seventeen. I set up a donation system using PayPal and Zelle, configured so payments were routed directly into a dedicated account and sent automatic notifications to the owner the moment anything came in. It took a few hours to get right, but once it was running, donations that had never made it through before started coming in from people across the city. That was the first time I understood what it actually meant to solve a problem for someone who needed it solved. That experience shaped everything that came after. I spent years volunteering at that temple, not just on the technical side but in whatever way I could be useful: organizing events, helping with outreach, showing up for prayers and community gatherings, and doing the unglamorous work of keeping things running so the people who depended on that space could keep depending on it. I came from somewhere else, still adjusting to a new country, and the temple was one of the first places that felt like home. Giving back to it wasn't something I had to think about. It was just what you did when somewhere made room for you. The impact I want to make going forward is an extension of that same instinct. I'm studying information systems with a minor in AI, not because I want to work in technology for its own sake, but because I've seen firsthand what happens when a small organization gets the right system in place. Donations flow. Events get promoted. People who couldn't give before suddenly can. Most of the organizations doing the most important community work, temples, nonprofits, and local service groups, are running on outdated tools or no tools at all, not because they don't care but because nobody with the right knowledge ever sat down with them and helped. I want to be someone who does that, who takes what I'm learning in a classroom and brings it back to the kind of places that need it most. Longer term, I want to consult on technology for organizations across industries, including the ones that exist to serve communities rather than to profit from them. Being someone in this field who came from an underrepresented background, who knows what it feels like to be on the other side of the gap, matters. It changes the questions you ask and the problems you notice. I don't think impact has to be enormous to be real. Sometimes it's just making sure the donation goes through. I want to spend my career doing both.

The first system I ever built was for a temple. The owners were older and didn't have anyone handling the technical side, so at seventeen I set up a donation system using PayPal and Zelle, configured so that payments were routed directly into a dedicated account and triggered automatic notifications to the owner. Once it was running, I couldn't stop thinking about the layer underneath it. A person across the city tapped their phone, and within seconds money moved, an account updated, and someone got notified, all without anyone manually doing anything in the middle. I didn't have the vocabulary for what I was curious about yet. I just knew I wanted to understand how something like that was built. That question is what drove me toward technology. Not the tools themselves, but what they make possible when someone actually understands how they work. I grew up between cultures and watched early on how unevenly technology was distributed, how the same systems that made businesses run smoothly in one place were completely out of reach somewhere else. That gap never stopped bothering me. The temple system was small, two apps serving maybe a hundred people, but the logic behind it was the same logic that runs enterprise systems at a scale I can barely imagine. One input moves through a system and creates effects nobody sees until something breaks. A delay in one place creates a problem three layers removed from where it started. I want to understand those connections at a level where I can actually do something about them. That's why I'm pursuing information systems with a minor in AI. Not because I landed on it by process of elimination, but because it sits exactly at the intersection I've been drawn to since I was standing in that temple figuring out routing logic on my own. I'm an international student from a background where opportunities like this aren't guaranteed, and I've had to be deliberate about every step I've taken. I finished my STEM Early College program on the Dean's List every semester while managing real responsibilities outside of school. I wasn't doing it to build a resume. I was doing it because I knew what I wanted, and I understood that getting there required showing up consistently even when it was hard. In ten years I want to be consulting on enterprise technology across industries, the kind of work where understanding how a system is built at a deep level actually matters. I want to be someone companies call when something is broken in a way nobody can explain, or when they're trying to build something that hasn't been done before. Getting there means building a real foundation now, not just learning tools but understanding the thinking behind them. This scholarship would make that path more accessible at a moment when every resource counts. I'm not asking for something to make things comfortable. I'm asking for something that makes finishing what I've started possible.

When I first moved to the United States, I didn't know how loud silence could be. Back home there was always something: family in the next room, neighbors outside, the general noise of a place that knew you existed. Here, I'd come home to an apartment that felt like it was still waiting for someone to move in, eat whatever I could put together, and lie awake thinking about whether I'd made the right decision. Everything was unfamiliar at once: the way people talked, the way things worked, the unspoken rules of a place I hadn't grown up in. I was carrying the pressure of having to succeed because too many people were counting on me for me to not, and most days I didn't have anyone to say that to. What helped, more than I expected, was the temple. I had started volunteering there not long after I arrived, mostly because I needed something to do and somewhere to be, but it became something I didn't realize I was looking for. Walking in on a Saturday morning, the smell of incense still hanging in the air from the prayer the night before, the familiar sound of the same chants I'd grown up hearing: it was the first place in this country that felt like it recognized me. I wasn't a student on a visa or someone still figuring out how to navigate a grocery store. I was just someone who belonged there. Faith, for me, has never been something I could separate from community. The two come together. At the temple I was around people who understood where I came from without me having to explain it, and that gave me enough steadiness to keep going on the days when everything else felt uncertain. I started showing up not just for the prayers but for what came after: the conversations, the meals, the sense that I was part of something that existed before I arrived and would exist after. That continuity mattered. When you're new somewhere, you spend a lot of energy trying to find your footing. The temple gave me ground to stand on while I figured the rest out. I'm still adjusting in some ways, and I think that's probably true for a long time when you move somewhere new. But I carry what I learned in that period with me. Faith didn't make the hard parts disappear. It just made them survivable, and it reminded me that I didn't have to get through them alone. That's enough. That's actually a lot.