The first thing I noticed when I arrived in the United States was how much I didn't know. Not about the country itself I had read enough to have a picture of it, but about how things actually worked. The small systems that people who grew up here navigate without thinking: how to open a bank account, how to read a lease, how to talk to a professor, and what you are supposed to do when something goes wrong and there is no obvious person to ask. I figured it out, the way most immigrants do, by watching carefully and making mistakes quietly and trying again. I came from Gujarat, India, as an international student and the first in my family to pursue a degree abroad. My parents made that possible through a combination of savings, sacrifice, and a belief in education that never wavered even when the cost of it did. They are supporting me from abroad while simultaneously supporting my brother studying in another country. I have no access to federal financial aid, no work authorization off-campus, and no financial cushion for anything unexpected. Every semester requires everything to line up exactly right, and I approach it accordingly. What the immigrant experience taught me, more than anything else, is that you become very clear very quickly about what you are actually working toward. When the systems that support most students are closed to you, you stop taking the ones that are open for granted. I finished my STEM early college dual enrollment program on the Dean's List every semester. I spent years volunteering at a local temple, managing their website, building their donation system from scratch, organizing events, and showing up for a community that gave me a sense of home when I was still finding my footing in a new country. I am now pursuing a BBA in IT Business Analytics at UW-Whitewater with a finance minor and a data science minor, and I am co-developing an AI-powered note-taking application that helps students surface connections between their notes and identify gaps in their knowledge. My career aspirations are rooted in the same observation that brought me to this field in the first place. Growing up I watched how unevenly technology was distributed and how much that gap cost people and organizations that didn't have access to it. I want to work in financial systems and technology consulting, helping businesses understand what their data is actually telling them and make better decisions because of it. Long term I want to bring that expertise to communities where it is rare, places that look like where I came from, where the distance between what technology can do and what people actually have is still very wide. The immigrant experience is not something I carry as a burden. It is the thing that made me precise about my goals, honest about my limitations, and serious about not wasting the opportunities I have been given. This scholarship would help make sure those opportunities stay within reach.

Being a first-generation student means nobody at home can tell you what to expect. There is no older sibling who already figured out financial aid, no parent who knows what a credit hour is or how office hours work. You walk into systems that everyone around you seems to understand instinctively, and you quietly figure it out as you go because asking feels like admitting you don't belong there. I came to the United States from Gujarat, India, as the first in my family to pursue a degree abroad. My parents believed in education the way some people believe in religion as something worth sacrificing for without fully knowing what the return would look like. They are supporting me from abroad while also supporting my brother studying in another country, stretched thin across two continents, trusting that what they invested in would eventually matter. I carry that with me every single day. It does not feel like pressure so much as it feels like purpose. The challenges have been real. As an F-1 visa holder, I have no access to federal financial aid. My education is funded through family contributions, a sponsor here in the United States, and education loans. I cannot work off-campus. There is no financial cushion for anything unexpected. I adjusted to a new country largely alone, navigating systems nobody at home had experienced, while maintaining a full course load and volunteering extensively at a local temple, where I ended up managing the entire technical side, building the website, setting up a donation system from scratch, and handling event logistics and marketing because there was nobody else to do it. I finished my STEM early college dual enrollment program on the Dean's List every semester. I am now pursuing a BBA in IT Business Analytics at UW-Whitewater with a finance minor and a data science minor. I am also co-developing an AI-powered note-taking application with a friend, building something real outside the classroom because I think that is where the actual learning happens. My dream is specific. I want to work in financial systems and technology consulting, helping organizations understand what their data is telling them and make better decisions because of it. I want to eventually reach communities where that kind of expertise is rare, places that look like where I came from, where the gap between what technology can do and what people actually have access to is still very wide. This scholarship would matter practically; it would reduce the loan burden that quietly follows every semester and give me more room to focus on the work itself. But it would also matter in a way that is harder to explain. First-generation students do not always have people telling them they belong in the spaces they are walking into. A scholarship like this is someone saying, "We see what you are doing, and we believe it is worth supporting." That means more than the dollar amount.

The project I keep coming back to started with a conversation I wasn't supposed to be part of. I was volunteering at a temple when I overheard the owners trying to explain to a community member why there was no easy way to donate remotely. The answer was essentially that nobody had figured it out yet. I told them I would. I didn't fully know if I could. The problem seemed simple at first. I thought connecting a PayPal link to an existing account would be enough. It wasn't. Transactions were routing inconsistently, there was no separation between personal and temple funds, and the owner had no way of knowing when donations came in without checking manually. I had treated what were actually two separate problems, routing and notification, as one. The first version failed within an hour of testing. I went back to the documentation. I spent an afternoon reading through PayPal's business account configuration, understanding how dedicated accounts worked, and figuring out how to layer Zelle so the payment path was clean. The thing I hadn't understood the first time was that the notification trigger had to be configured independently from the routing logic. Once I separated those two problems, the solution became obvious. I set up a dedicated temple business account, configured all incoming donations to route directly into it, and set up automatic notifications so the owner received an alert on her phone the moment any transaction cleared. I ran a test transaction from my own phone. The money hit the account. Within seconds her phone buzzed. She walked into the room holding it up to show me like I hadn't just built the thing. She called a few other members over. They watched her run another test just to see it happen again. That room full of people delighted by something I built in an afternoon is the moment I think about when I try to explain why technology inspires me. It was not a sophisticated system by any professional standard. But it solved a real problem for real people who had no one else to solve it for them, and it did so automatically and invisibly from that point forward. That is what good technology actually does. I am currently co-developing something more ambitious: an AI-powered note-taking application for students that implements the Zettelkasten method, surfacing connections between notes taken across different topics, identifying knowledge gaps by comparing a student's notes against outside sources, and testing comprehension through a built-in quiz mode. The technical complexity is higher, but the instinct behind it is identical to what I was doing at that temple: find the problem nobody has solved well yet, understand it precisely, and build something that works quietly in the background so the person using it can focus on what actually matters. What inspires me about working in technology is not the tools or the industry. It is the moment when something you built does exactly what you intended it to do for someone who needed it. That moment is available to anyone willing to sit with a problem long enough to understand it. I intend to spend my career chasing it.

I grew up in Gujarat, India, in a household where education was the one thing my parents treated as non-negotiable. Gujarat has a long cultural tradition of enterprise and self-reliance, and those values shaped everything about how my family approached the future. My parents did not have unlimited resources. What they had was a clear belief that investing in their children's education was worth whatever it cost, and they made decisions accordingly, including the decision to support me in pursuing a degree in the United States, knowing it would stretch them thin across two continents simultaneously while also supporting my brother studying abroad. That belief is what inspired me to come here. I did not choose the United States because it was the easiest path. I chose it because I understood, growing up, how much of a difference access to the right education and the right environment makes. I watched technology change what was possible for people and organizations, and I watched just as clearly how many places that change had not reached. I wanted to be someone who understood those systems well enough to do something about that gap. The United States offered the academic environment to build that foundation seriously. I am currently pursuing a BBA in IT Business Analytics at UW-Whitewater with a finance minor and a data science minor. Before transferring I completed my STEM Early College dual enrollment program on the Dean's List every semester, earning college credits alongside my high school diploma while volunteering extensively at a local temple where I managed the website, built a donation system from scratch, and handled all technical and operational needs for an organization that had no one else to turn to. The most significant challenge I have faced is navigating higher education in a country where the systems designed to help students, federal financial aid, work authorization, and institutional support networks are largely closed to me as an F1 visa holder. My education is funded through family contributions from India, a sponsor here in the United States, and education loans. There is no cushion. Every semester is a financial calculation that has to work out exactly right, and I carry that awareness into everything I do. What I have learned from living inside that constraint is that clarity of purpose matters more than comfort. When you do not have the option of coasting, you figure out very quickly what you are actually working toward and why. The person who has inspired me most is my mother. She never framed the sacrifices she made as sacrifices. She framed them as investments, quietly and without complaint, in a future she believed in before I fully did. She is the reason I understand that showing up consistently, even when the conditions are difficult, is not just a strategy; it is a form of respect for everyone who made it possible for you to be there. After graduation I plan to work in financial systems and technology consulting, specifically at the intersection of data analytics and business decision-making. Long term I want to bring that expertise to organizations and communities where it is rare and the need for it is high, including places that look like where I came from. This scholarship would reduce the loan burden that currently shadows every semester and give me the stability to focus fully on building what I came here to build.

I came to the United States from Gujarat, India, as an international student and the first in my family to pursue a degree abroad. That distinction sounds significant from the outside. From the inside, it mostly means you are figuring things out without a roadmap in a country that doesn't know you yet while carrying the weight of everything your family invested to get you there. I am currently pursuing a BBA in IT Business Analytics at UW-Whitewater with a finance minor and a data science minor. What drew me to this field started long before college. At seventeen I was volunteering at a temple where the owners were older and had no technical support. I built their website, set up a donation system using PayPal and Zelle configured to route payments automatically and send instant notifications, and handled event marketing and logistics entirely on my own. Nobody taught me how. I read documentation, tested configurations, broke things, fixed them, and kept going. That experience figuring out something real for people who genuinely needed it is what made me understand why I wanted to study this seriously. The obstacles have been real and consistent. As an F-1 visa holder, I have no access to federal financial aid. My education is funded through a combination of family support from India, a sponsor here in the United States, and education loans. My parents are simultaneously supporting my brother studying in another country, which means their contribution to my costs is limited and stretched. I cannot work off-campus. There is no financial cushion. Every semester requires everything to line up exactly right, and I do not have the option of taking that lightly. What has kept me going is simple and comes from multiple directions at once. It is my parents and what they quietly gave up to make this possible. It is knowing that people back home are watching and that I do not want to be someone who folded when things got hard. And it is the version of me I have been building toward, the one who finishes what he started and does something worth doing with it. I finished my STEM Early College dual enrollment program on the Dean's List every semester while managing real responsibilities outside of school. I am currently co-developing an AI-powered note-taking application that helps students surface connections between their notes and identify gaps in their knowledge. I show up. That is the most consistent thing I know about myself. The impact I want to make runs through everything I am building. Growing up between cultures, I watched how unevenly technology was distributed and how much that gap cost people and communities. I want to work at the intersection of business and technology in a way that addresses that gap, bringing the kind of systems expertise that well-resourced organizations take for granted into spaces that have never had access to it. The exchange of knowledge and perspectives that international students bring to this country is exactly what this scholarship honors. I intend to make that exchange count.

I was born and raised in Gujarat, India, in a family where education was never treated as optional. Gujarat has a long cultural tradition of valuing hard work, enterprise, and self-reliance, and those values shaped how I grew up thinking about my own future. My parents instilled in me early that the effort you put into building your mind is the one investment nobody can take from you. That belief is what ultimately drove our family's decision to pursue higher education in the United States, even knowing the financial sacrifice it would require. My Indian background has shaped my educational journey in ways that go beyond values. Growing up in Gujarat I watched firsthand how unevenly technology and opportunity were distributed, how the same tools that made businesses run efficiently in some places were completely inaccessible in others. That observation is part of what drew me to IT business analytics. I want to understand the systems that drive modern organizations well enough to eventually bring that expertise back to communities that need it, including the ones I grew up around. I am currently pursuing a BBA in IT business analytics at UW-Whitewater with a finance minor and a data science minor. I maintained a strong GPA and completed my STEM early college dual enrollment program on the Dean's List every semester before transferring. Academically I have not given anyone a reason to doubt my commitment. The financial picture is harder to talk about but important to be honest about. As an international student on an F1 visa, I have no access to federal financial aid. My education is funded through a combination of family support from my parents in India and a sponsor here in the United States, supplemented by education loans. My parents are simultaneously supporting my brother, who is studying in another country, which means what they can contribute to my costs is limited and stretched thin. The loans help bridge the gap, but they are also a weight that grows with each semester. There is no financial cushion for unexpected expenses; books, materials, and fees that fall outside what the scholarship or sponsor covers come directly out of a budget that has very little room. I am not asking for support because I have not worked hard enough to deserve a different situation. I am asking because the situation is genuinely difficult and this scholarship would make a direct and meaningful difference. Every dollar of need-based support I receive translates directly into reduced loan burden and more stability to focus on my studies. I am the kind of student this scholarship was created for: Indian origin, strong academic record, real financial need, and a clear plan for what I am building toward. I would be grateful for the opportunity to prove that.

My interest in computer science did not start with a class. It started with a problem I could not stop thinking about. At seventeen I was volunteering at a temple where the owners had no technical support and no system for accepting donations remotely. I built their website, configured a donation system using PayPal and Zelle to route payments automatically and notify the owner instantly, and figured out every step by reading documentation and testing until it worked. When it finally ran the way I intended money moving, accounts updating, notifications firing, all without anyone manually doing anything in the middle I became obsessed with the layer underneath it. Who decided how the notification knew when to fire? How did the system know where to route the payment? I didn't have the vocabulary for what I was curious about yet. That curiosity is what led me to pursue this field seriously. I am currently pursuing a BBA in IT business analytics at UW-Whitewater with a finance minor and a data science minor. I am also co-developing an AI-powered note-taking application with a friend that implements the Zettelkasten method, surfacing connections between a student's past and present notes, identifying gaps in their knowledge using outside sources, and testing comprehension through a built-in quiz mode. Building it has pushed me into areas no classroom has covered yet, and it has confirmed that the intersection of software and real human problems is exactly where I want to be. My goal after graduation is to work in financial systems and technology consulting, specifically the kind of work where understanding how data flows through a system at a deep level changes the quality of decisions an organization makes. I want to be someone who can sit in front of a broken process and know where to start, not because I've memorized procedures but because I understand how the underlying system is built. Long term I want to reach organizations and communities where that kind of expertise is rare and the need for it is high. I think I am a strong candidate for this scholarship because my path to this field looks a lot like what Chris Jackson's story describes: someone who struggled to afford the degree but refused to let that be the reason they stopped. I am an international student on an F1 visa with no access to federal financial aid, supported by a family abroad that is already stretched thin. I have built everything I have from scratch, been on the Dean's List every semester, managed real responsibilities outside of school, and never waited for someone to hand me the next step. Chris Jackson made time for people and asked how he could help. This scholarship is how his legacy can help someone like me a student who will not waste it.

I didn't think of it as hacking at the time. I was just trying to solve a problem nobody else was going to solve. The temple I volunteered at was losing donations. People wanted to give, but the process was unclear: no dedicated account, no easy way to contribute remotely, and the owners were older with no technical background and no one to turn to. Money was coming in through cash only when people showed up in person. Most people never gave at all because there was no system that made it easy. I told the owners I'd figure something out. I didn't fully know if I could. My first attempt failed quickly. I tried routing donations through a basic PayPal link tied to an existing account and assumed that would be enough. It wasn't. Transactions were inconsistent, there was no separation between personal and temple funds, and the owner had no way of knowing when donations came in without checking manually, which meant contributions sat unacknowledged for days. I had treated the routing and the notification as the same problem when they were actually two separate ones. I went back to the documentation. I spent an afternoon reading through PayPal's business account configuration, understanding how dedicated accounts worked, and figuring out how to connect Zelle so that the payment path was clean and separate from any personal finances. The thing I hadn't understood the first time was that the notification trigger had to be configured independently from the routing logic. Once I separated those two problems in my head, the solution became obvious. I set up a dedicated temple business account, configured all incoming donations to route directly into it, and set up automatic notifications so the owner received an alert on her phone the moment any transaction cleared. Then I ran a test. I sent a small donation from my own phone. The money hit the account. Within seconds her phone buzzed. She walked into the room holding it up to show me like I hadn't just built the thing myself. She called a few of the other members over. They watched her send another test transaction just to see it happen again. The room was genuinely delighted not because the technology was impressive by any professional standard, but because something that had felt impossible to them thirty minutes ago was now just working. Quietly, automatically, without anyone needing to be in the middle of it. That moment is the one I keep coming back to. The gap between "This should work" and "This actually works" is where most of the real learning happens, and the moment it clicks into place when something you built does exactly what you intended it to do for people who needed it is unlike anything else. It is not about the complexity of what you built. It is about whether it solves the problem for the person standing in front of you. I have been chasing that feeling ever since. I am now co-developing an AI-powered note-taking application that surfaces connections between a student's past and present notes and identifies gaps in their knowledge. The technology is more complex. The instinct behind it is exactly the same find the problem nobody else is fixing, figure it out, and make something that works.

The American dream, the way I understood it before I came here, was simple: work hard, get an education, build a life. It sounded straightforward from the outside. It is not straightforward from the inside. I came to the United States as an international student, the first in my family to pursue a degree abroad. I left behind everything familiar, my country, my community, and the language of my daily life because my parents believed that education here could open doors that simply didn't exist back home. That belief cost them something real. They are supporting me from abroad while simultaneously supporting my brother studying in another country, stretched between two continents with no margin for error. I cannot work legally. I have no access to federal financial aid. Every semester is a financial calculation that has to work out exactly right. What I found when I arrived was that the American dream is less a guarantee and more a test of whether you can keep going when the structure that was supposed to support you isn't there. The dream doesn't account for the isolation of adjusting to a country that doesn't know you yet. It doesn't account for the pressure of carrying your family's sacrifice on your shoulders while trying to pass your classes and figure out where you fit. It doesn't account for what it feels like to watch peers access resources you are categorically excluded from, not because you worked less hard but because of the document you carry. And yet I kept going. I finished my STEM early college dual enrollment program on the Dean's List every semester. I spent years volunteering at a temple, building their website, setting up their donation system, organizing events, and showing up for a community that gave me a sense of home when I had very little else. I am now pursuing a BBA in IT Business Analytics at UW-Whitewater, working toward a career in financial systems and data analytics, and co-developing an AI-powered note-taking application on the side. I am building the version of the American dream that nobody handed me. My definition of the American dream is not about wealth or status. It is about the ability to build something real from whatever you arrived with. It is about showing up consistently in a system that was not designed with you in mind and refusing to let that be the reason you stop. It is about using whatever you manage to build to make things more possible for the people who come after you because the dream only means something if it doesn't end with you. I am not asking for the dream to be easy. I am asking for enough support to finish what I started. That is all it has ever taken.

Education, for me, is not abstract. It is the specific thing standing between where I am and where I need to be. I came to the United States as an international student, the first in my family to pursue a degree abroad, with no federal financial aid available to me and no safety net if things went wrong. My parents are supporting me from abroad while simultaneously supporting my brother studying in another country. There is no margin for things to go wrong. That reality sits with me every single day, and it makes every class, every grade, and every opportunity feel like something I cannot afford to waste. I am pursuing a BBA in IT Business Analytics at UW-Whitewater with a finance minor and a data science minor, focused on the place where technology and business decision-making actually meet. What drew me to this field was not a classroom but a problem. At seventeen I was volunteering at a temple where the owners were older and had nobody handling their technical needs. I built their website, set up a donation system from scratch, managed event marketing and logistics, and figured out everything by reading documentation and testing until it worked. That experience showed me what education could actually unlock not just knowledge but the ability to walk into a broken situation and know how to fix it. I want to spend my career doing that at scale, working in FP&A or financial systems consulting, helping organizations understand what their data is actually telling them and making better decisions because of it. The challenges I have faced have been real and consistent. Adjusting to a new country alone, navigating a system I hadn't grown up in, and carrying the weight of my family's sacrifice without being able to work legally or lean on financial aid none of it has been easy. There were stretches early on where the isolation was genuinely heavy and the pressure felt like too much to hold. What kept me going was never one thing. It was my parents and everything they quietly gave up to make this possible. It was knowing that people back home were watching and that I didn't want to be someone who folded when it got hard. And it was the version of me I've been building toward the one that finishes what he started and does something worth doing with it. Those three things pull in the same direction, and I have learned to let them. I finished my STEM Early College dual enrollment program on the Dean's List every semester while managing real responsibilities outside of school. I am currently co-developing an AI-powered note-taking application that surfaces connections between a student's notes and identifies gaps in their knowledge. I show up. That is the thing I know most consistently about myself. This scholarship would make a direct difference. Every dollar of support I receive is a dollar's worth of pressure lifted, which means a dollar's worth of focus I can put back into my work. The father this scholarship honors believed that education unlocks opportunities most people never have. I believe that too. I am asking for help making sure I get all the way through the door.

The problem started simple enough. The temple I volunteered at was losing donations because the process was too confusing. People wanted to give, but when they asked how, the answer was essentially "figure it out." There was no clear system, no dedicated account, and the owners were older and didn't have anyone to walk them through setting something up. Some people gave cash when they came in. Most didn't give at all because there was no easy way to do it remotely. The owners knew money was being left on the table but didn't know where to start. I told them I'd figure it out. I didn't actually know if I could. My first attempt was straightforward; I thought I could just link a personal PayPal account to a Zelle account and have donations come in there. That lasted about an hour before I realized the problem. Transactions were routing inconsistently, there was no separation between personal and temple funds, and there was definitely no way to notify the owner automatically when something came in. The owner was checking manually, which meant donations were sitting unacknowledged sometimes for days. That wasn't going to work. I went back to the documentation. I spent a few hours reading through PayPal's business account setup, understanding how to configure a dedicated account that was entirely separate from any personal finances, and figuring out how Zelle's notification system actually worked. The key thing I hadn't understood the first time was that the routing logic and the notification trigger were two separate configurations; I had been treating them like one thing. Once I separated them in my head, the solution became clearer. I set up a dedicated temple business account, configured PayPal to route all incoming donations directly into it, and set up automatic notifications so the owner received an alert the moment any transaction came through. The first test transaction worked. Someone across the city sent a donation from their phone, the money hit the account, and within seconds the owner got a notification on hers. She called me into the room to show me like I hadn't just set it up myself. That part was genuinely satisfying. What didn't work perfectly was the documentation for new donors. People still occasionally sent money to the wrong place because we hadn't made the instructions visible enough. I put together a simple one-page instructions sheet that we posted on the temple website and shared in the community group chat, which cut down on the confusion significantly but didn't eliminate it entirely. If I were doing it again, I'd build a dedicated donation page on the website with the instructions embedded directly rather than as a separate document one fewer step for the donor, one fewer thing to miss. That experience taught me something I've thought about a lot since. The first version of a solution is almost never the right one, and the gap between "this should work" and "this actually works" is where most of the real learning happens. I'm building a mini ERP app right now with the same temple, and I think about that template system constantly; every time something doesn't behave the way we expected, I know what to do. Go back to the documentation, separate the problem into its parts, and try again.

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.