I believe in people and I chose to believe in the good in others. Therefore, I believe that the way to empower women in the 21st century is to spread positivity and stand up to injustice everywhere. Women are constantly being pulled down into negativity as we are held to unrealistic and often harmful standards of beauty from the world around us. As we live in a world where the internet and social media shape the values and principles of our society, negativity online towards women has become a massive issue, especially among the youth in this country. According to The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, almost 15% of high school students in the U.S. have at some point in their life experienced cyberbullying in the year of 2016, a number that since has been rising. This scary high number needs to be the ultimate inspiration for the change in our society. It needs to bring out a conversation about social media safety as it is harmful to our youth and to our future as a whole. In order to empower women in this country today, it is my conviction that we all need to stand up against negativity, online and in person. We need to put an end to this treacherous online bullying and body shaming by being role models to our kids and to everyone watching. We need to say no to tearing others down for personal gain or for insecurity. And most importantly, we need to show our love and support to those who are facing the scrutiny that comes with social media. I want to lift women up by taking a stance against negative comments online, at home, in school, on the subway, and at the office. I want to lift women up by promoting body positivity and mental health practices. I want to lift women up by not tolerating being put in place, talked down to, or made feel less important in any aspect of my life. I want to lift women up by working in a male-dominated industry and show girls that they can be anything that they desire. I want to lift women up by being the best darn woman I can possibly be. I am proud to be me and I am extremely proud to be a woman. And that is how I plan to empower women in this country today.

The best present I have ever received, still to this day, was a used Sony Alpha 500 that my father gifted me on Christmas eve when I was thirteen years old. I can still feel the thrilling rush of excitement tearing through the wrapping paper as I realized what was in the package. The following days I spent hours upon hours taking hundreds of pictures, testing different exposures, and reading photography magazines (we had a limited amount of internet access back then you see, so my siblings had all gotten me magazines as Christmas gifts.) Since this was a time before iPhones and mobile cameras this was the first expose I had of taking pictures of any sort, and I was in love. Had you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up back then, my answer would have been simple and straightforward. I wanted to become a nature photographer. I wanted to travel the world to the most remote of places to document other cultures and other civilizations. I wanted to become an adventurer. Now life took me in a slightly different direction as it turned out that I was also quite a talented tennis player. And so for many years, I traveled while playing a sport that I loved and it brought me here to the U.S. for which I will forever be grateful for. However, after quitting tennis I found that I was missing something in my life. I was missing having a creative outlet and I was missing having to work hard to achieve a goal. Simply stated I was missing photography in my life. And so I have now decided to take courses in photography (alongside my MBA studies) to relit that fire and the passion that I used to feel for art and photography. I ultimately want to be able to create beautiful art traveling the world while immersing myself in other cultures and the pure beauty of our planet. I hope to be able to combine my business degree with the passion I have, and I hope that by doing so I can inspire other women to do so as well.

"Always forward, never back" Although I am fairy uncertain of the origin of this quote, it has been embarked in my brain ever since I first heard it on a relatively infamous tv-show called 'Imposters'. The main character of the show being a con artist who tricks men into falling in love with her, to then steal their money, intrigued me into watching the whole show in 2019. In a time where I felt like I had no control of my life, this quote gave me strength to keep going. It reminded me that there is no use in looking to the past for answers, there is only the now and the future. Nothing else.

One in seven people living in the United States today was not born in this country. I am one of those seven. 14 percent of the entire U.S. population are foreign-born individuals. 14 percent, that is more people than the total inhabitants of California, Nevada, and Utah combined. That is not to mention all of the second generation Americans whose parents or immediate family immigrated before they were born. Adding that percentage we are now up to 26 percent. And adding everyone whose relatives at some point in history immigrated to the U.S. from a foreign country, we are now up to 100 percent. Even the Native Americans are believed to have come from Asia over the Bering land Bridge thousands of years ago. Multiculturalism therefore is, and always has been, a major part of life in the U.S. However, the idealistic concepts of being able to find a better life in the United States for immigrants and refugees does not portrait the reality anymore. In later years, the U.S. is a country that methodically treats immigrants (along with non-white Americans and other minorities) in a way that is profoundly different from the privileged white American. Having less opportunity for employment, for education, and for housing is just a few of the challenges that come with being an immigrant in this country. I knew moving to the US to make a home for myself wouldn’t be easy. But I didn’t know it would be this hard. 7 years in the making and I am still struggling finding a way to stay. The worldwide Covid pandemic and the new immigration regulations brought in by the former president sure hasn’t been kind on people like me. But what are people like me? And what are people like you? Aren’t we all the same. We have the same number of chromosomes, we all share some of the same DNA, and we all share the same need of immediate basic essentials. So why aren’t we all more open to welcoming each other? Why are we still pretending like we aren’t all immigrants in this country. We are all just humans after all. One in seven people living in the United States today was not born in this country. But ten out of ten are human beings who all deserve a chance to succeed here. This is after all, the land of opportunity.

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Don't forget. Just in and out. The need to remind myself to breathe was a constant endeavor in my early years as a high-level junior tennis player. All too many times I found myself holding my breath and somehow forgetting the most basic of human instincts. Sometimes I think that if humans, just like dolphins, were selective breathers I most certainly would have died right there on that tennis court barely making it into my teenage years. Breathing shouldn't be hard. It shouldn't feel like a constant struggle and it should not feel like the whole world is sitting on your chest as you take the tennis court as a 14-year-old girl. But for me it did. 'She's a nervous kid' they said when my performance in tournaments was nowhere near my performance in practice. 'Has all the talent she just needs to want it more' others said. None of them aware of the mental struggle I was facing every day. Having no knowledge about mental health or psychology at that age I didn't tell anyone how I was feeling. I didn't share my thoughts or worries with friends or my parents and by the time I was seventeen it had taken away all joy and love for the sport. I decided that I didn't want to feel like the world's biggest failure anymore and so I quit, cold turkey, thinking that my so-called 'performance anxiety' would fade away as my racquets collected dust in the basement. Unfortunately, that was not the case. After quitting I took all of the focus and time I'd spent on tennis and I put that into other hobbies and activities. I spent every waken hour either in school, at my part-time job, or hanging out with my friends getting into trouble. It was all good distractions and I found that a life without sports felt okay. It wasn't the dream but it was okay. That is until my former tennis induced performance problems became everyday panic anxiety problems. Removing myself from the competitive and stressful environment that is the junior tennis world had not helped at all. In fact, the pressure on my chest and lungs seemed far worse than they had ever before. I spiraled quickly down into a panic anxiety-induced depression that got so bad that I was scared of leaving the house in case another breakdown would emerge. All while going through what was one of the toughest times in my life I kept thinking that this is not me. This is not who I am and this is not what I want. Getting back on my feet wasn't easy and I still to this day consider it as one of my greatest achievements. The process was long and hard and although I never would have been able to do it without help from family and friends the biggest thing was for me to admit to myself that I had a problem and that I needed to do something about it. I decided that this wasn't how I wanted to feel for the rest of my life. I decided that my future wasn't going to be decided for me. I decided that I wanted to be happy. I eventually went on to travel the world and once again compete in tennis after getting the help I needed, and it is now my dream to create a better environment for young athletes. I feel like it is my purpose to give back to the sport and to build a community of coaches who are educated in mental coaching as well as being excellent tennis instructors. I want my life to be the inspiration of a new generation of young tennis players who gets the help they need, on and off the court. After finishing school, I would like to open up a small business that travels around the country educating coaches about mental health problems among athletes as well as teaching them sport psychology methods. I want to create a small team of young professionals, educated in mental counseling and in sports coaching, who aspire to make a difference in young people's lives. As of right now, this is only a dream of mine, however, I believe that with a little bit of oomph and hard work anything is possible.