For a few years, I've identified as transgender-nonbinary, as I've always been genderfluid but lean towards female. During high school, there were definitely points where I was harassed and occasionally threatened by some of my classmates simply for the sake of just expressing my gender differently, so it sometimes made it very difficult to continue my interest and drive in being as deeply involved at my school as it had been, but I hadn't let them stop me. So far while attending college though, I've been fortunate enough to be fully accepted at my campus and where the harassment and threats I faced back in Iowa have been fully absent. However, I still have faced some discrimination when finding ways to pay for college, as I felt I've been denied from certain scholarships entirely because I brought up my gender identity as part of my larger story and struggles. I am majoring Mechanical Engineering and minoring in Art. There's a lot I want to accomplish while I'm pursuing my education here, since there's so many things I want to get involved with to make a positive impact. My primary educational goal is to improve my abilities to run experiments on new ideas and to improve my abilities to cooperate with others in professional settings. A goal I want to achieve outside the classroom is to get involved with various student groups, most notably Engineers Without Borders. To me, the most important thing about having the opportunity to pursue an education is to make sure I can improve the lives of others with it, so being part of Engineers Without Borders means that I can help build my experience with engineering while being part of a larger effort to improve the lives of those in both my local community and in other countries. My most significant goal for my career is to be able to work at a business or non-profit that emphasizes working to address disparities in a lack of access to basic human needs. More specifically, I want to work to make more efficient and cost-effective solutions for solar energy and access to clean water. I used to live in Ecuador with my grandparents, and I found there that having reliable access to electricity and clean water from the tap was something that was fully taken for granted in the United States. Because of this, I want to work towards making solar energy and clean water solutions more affordable so that poorer nations in South America and Africa can lower their reliance on fossil fuels and, more importantly, have easier access to a fundamental human right. Outside of engineering, I also hope to run as a representative at the state or federal level so I can help advocate and push for more change in various issues that we have here in the United States. The most significant impact I want to make an impact on the LGBTQ+ community is to support LGBTQ+ students in achieving their goals and dreams, especially students coming from homes where they were not accepted and had faced denial in abuse by their family. Specifically, I want to create financial opportuities for LGBTQ+ students so they can pursue an education and purchase supplies, whether they are attending a traditional four year university or if they are pursuing a more niche career in fields like music and woodworking. Additionally, I want to work with local and state governments in creating nonprofits to help provide more opportunities for LGBTQ+ individuals to have legal and emotional support in escaping abusive homes.

While there's a lot I want to do in my future and some parts of my plans can change, a constant factor is that I want to help others. I grew up in poverty-stricken Ecuador (where much of my family was born) and was raised by a single immigrant mom on a low income in rural Iowa. Both of these major life experiences gave me a unique childhood growing up and, more importantly, were a major step in helping me become a very empathetic person early on. My empathy is especially strong for those growing up in poverty, as well as those coming from first-generation immigrant families and who may very well be immigrants themselves. Coming from a low-income immigrant family myself, I fully understand and have felt the limiting effect it can have on opportunities to participate and succeed in school, make friends, and pursue their dreams. During my time in college, I want to get involved with groups like Engineers Without Borders so I can start applying my education to make a positive impact on others. I've already spoken with representatives from my university's Engineers Without Borders student group and it has only made me want to be a part of it even more. Beyond college, I want to make sure I'm putting my education towards bettering my local, regional, and international community. While there is an array of projects and ideas I want to achieve, the two projects I'm most passionate about are renewable energy and improving access to clean water. More specifically, I want to design units to be more efficient and cost-effective so poverty-stricken nations in South America, Africa, and Asia can have improved access to these vital resources, especially during times of natural crisis. Another very important thing that I plan on doing is finding ways to financially support low-income students to allow them to pursue their dreams. Beyond just giving a scholarship to students attending traditional universities, I also want to make sure that those pursuing more hands-on paths get that same chance. Artists, musicians, and woodworkers are part of that group, and I want to help coordinate with them so they can get the necessary tools and supplies for their trade, find opportunities to practice and learn, and most essentially find ways for them to be able to give back to the community and incorporate art in everyone's everyday lives. Beyond just engineering and philanthropy, I also hope to become more politically involved and run for a state or national representative position to advocate for more affordable (and eventually free) higher education and the government (at national, state, and municipal levels) to financially support more artists and artisans in the interest of creating more public art. I find it appalling that we continue to force most students to worry about finances just as much as their education, only to come out to jobs essential to society often being underpaid and underappreciated (such as teachers). This scholarship will help me substantially because it will allow me to get a step closer to stressing less about finances and focusing more on why I came to college: To learn. More importantly, it'll help me keep an opportunity that I am still very grateful for, which is to attend college at all. Being awarded this scholarship also means it will offer me a chance to give back to the community sooner. Less student debt means that I can start working at non-profit institutions and charitable organizations, and means I can be more financially stable sooner so I can start supporting future students in following their dreams.

A product that has not only influenced but has ignited me into exploring deeper into the space is the field of automobiles in its entirety. While there is a multitude of reasons, the biggest reason why automobiles have made had a significant influence on me is because of the sheer amount of science and technology advancements the industry has made in ~120 years, as well as all the various disciplines of engineering and tech that encompass the industry. Something I would do to impact the tech industry would be to place a higher importance on recognizing the effect technology can have on people, the environment, and other areas of importance. Such examples include social media algorithms distributing dangerous misinformation to select groups, a new invention for convenience leading to a certain species in nature becoming endangered, etc. While there is always a focus on setting out to make new inventions and making improvements upon existing inventions to make them better, rarely do those in the industry stop to consider and investigate the potential damage new technology can have on other areas outside of the main goal. A very good example of this is electric vehicles I do believe the tech industry does have a social and moral obligation in many areas, including being inclusive to all consumers. By not being inclusive of all consumers, including marginalized groups, there are many negative outcomes that can occur as a result. For example, by not addressing major harassment that some consumers may experience on platforms such as social media, the negative outcomes are obvious, as the tech industry's inaction would make the harassment seem to be okay, allowing such marginalized groups to continue to being harassed rather than cracking down on harassment that can often translate to real world issues. Another example is by not being inclusive of certain consumers who utilize technology as a marketplace to sell their goods, such as by not showing their website on search results, the sellers suffer as a result other websites (such as Amazon) being prioritized over their own website, and potential buyers suffer by missing out on a more high quality product that supports an actual business rather than Amazon. A final example is that by not being inclusive to all consumers, the tech industry prevents the potential social and economic growth that can occur as a result of interconnected differentiating groups, and instead causing people to stay in their own small bubble.