My faith is a core part of who I am. I would like to talk about my relationship with Christianity, as I grew up, and how I learned to cherish it. Then, I will discuss how I plan to carry my faith into my future career. I grew up in a Congolese American household. My parents didn’t want me to speak our native language, Lingala, or the official language, French, because they wanted me to focus on speaking English while growing up in Chicago. Nevertheless, the larger Congolese community we attended church with spoke only French. Thus, for most of my childhood, I went to church and barely understood a word of the sermon, which often went on for an hour before we danced and sang songs for another hour. Thus, I grew up feeling culturally and spiritually Christian but not understanding most of the faith, even the most common stories. I ended up falling out of Christianity when I entered high school and fell in with the wrong crowd of atheist YouTubers. I started calling myself an atheist, then an agnostic, but I still went to church and did all the same motions. Looking back at it, I think it said more about my lack of understanding of the faith than a true rebellion. But throughout that time, without having God centered in my life, I was dealing with a lot of things, like self-esteem issues and bouts of social anxiety. I kept calling myself an agnostic throughout high school. It changed after I graduated and started attending a church my dad went to, a quaint church led by a Korean pastor in the mountains, a short distance from Denver. They spoke Korean and English, and within a few months, I learned more about the faith than I did in years at the Congolese churches we went to. I experienced a lot of spiritual growth during COVID. During the pandemic, my mom converted to Catholicism, and out of her devotion, I started going with her and wanted to convert. That was when I started being more sincere about my faith. I started praying more, reading more religious literature, watching Catholic videos, and attending Catholic classes. I started looking at the way my life is, the music/TV I listen to, the words I used, my goals, etcetera. God showed me a way of being where I don’t need to appease the world to gain self-respect, but that I can gain everything, true peace, by submitting to his will alone. It was through my faith in God that He became the healing bedrock of my life. Looking ahead as a senior university student, my career goals are twofold: to graduate with a law degree and to start a business, for which I already have a few ideas. My faith in God has helped me center my goals so that my work serves the greater good. I put Him in my prayers and ask that in everything I do, everything that I aspire to, in all my plans and thoughts, that it all may bring me and the world closer to Him. The role of God in my career is in everything. He is my guidance, my coach, my direction, my goals, and my resources to get there. I hope to continue to center him by understanding his will for me as I grow in my faith.

I grew up in a Congolese household in Chicago. My parents were both immigrants from the DRC. My dad was a telecommunications engineer, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom with a fashion business. Where I grew up was a majority-black area of Chicago. Most residents were African-American, with some other African immigrants and Latinos. Growing up, a big part of my life was the Congolese community in Chicago, which was one of the top destinations for Congolese immigrants. That meant I had a lot of family friends who my parents insisted were my uncles, aunts, and cousins, church every Sunday, lots of summer parties with dancing and Congolese music, fish, pondu, fufu, fumbwa, and much more. I am grateful for the experiences I’ve had. When I was nearing the end of high school, my parents divorced, and my dad moved to Colorado while my mom moved to Ontario. I spent the next few years living between Colorado and Canada, getting familiar with the different cultures before I entered the University of Colorado. When it comes to contributing to my family and community, I’ve learned throughout my life the value of serving others out of love and unity. I think that service is a powerful form of prayer. It was something I learned especially as I took on more responsibilities at the churches my parents attended. At my father’s church, for example, we would have fellowship hours every Sunday after service. Fellowship was when we shared a meal and caught up with each other’s lives. For years, every Sunday and occasionally on Saturday prep days, I would volunteer to help wherever I’m needed. I cleaned the dishes and tables and helped prepare meals. On Saturdays, I helped clean the church grounds, sweep and mop the floor, and/or help my dad grill meat for Sunday’s lunch. I also helped build the church’s website. To this day, I encourage my friends and classmates to engage in some form of volunteering. I am an Economics major at CU. Something I am keen about from my classes is entrepreneurship. The way I see it, our world is not perfect, so every system, every way we have, can be improved on. The more I’ve learned about business, the more I've developed an eye for how many unfulfilled needs there can be, whether in my dad’s community or my mom’s. One idea I’ve had so far is to open an African-themed, well-priced restaurant that serves healthy meals instead of fast food at the same price. Every time I have a business or organizational idea that could improve people’s lives, I write it down in my notes. I also want to go to law school after I graduate, most likely in a business-related field, like business law. In the long term, I would love to combine pursuing a JD with starting a business that improves the lives of others, especially in the communities I am a part of.

I strongly value Sergeant Albert Dono Ware’s commitment to service, sacrifice, and bravery, because I believe those are traits that we all need at times to get through the challenges of life. A particular journey of mine that challenged these characteristics in me was when I spent a few years studying remotely in Canada while still enrolled at the University of Colorado. I first started university in 2020. During the COVID lockdowns, my mom, who had separated from my dad when I was in high school, wanted me to study in Canada, where she had moved to. I agreed, because this was an opportunity for me to be closer to my mom while still working towards my degree. Thus, I spent a few years of my college experience studying online from Canada. Given Sergeant Ware's values, it took serious bravery and service on my part to make it through those years living in Canada. I was thousands of miles away from my fellow students and teachers, which made it hard at times to stay focused on studying because it felt so abstract while on a screen. Not only was it tough to stay on top of classes, but switching majors from Computer Science was particularly hard because I didn’t have anyone at school I could talk to in person. It took me a while to transfer to Economics; it required bravery on my part to pick something that I wasn’t sure I would be content with, but I’m glad it worked out well. Regarding the African diaspora in the U.S., I believe that a major sacrifice that should be made is to strengthen the community’s independence in educational reform. I believe that the educational experience in black-majority schools should be reformed to incorporate significantly more African history, culture, religion, and philosophy teaching, particularly (but not limited to) in the West-Central African region from which most of Black America’s ancestors came. My reasoning is simple: To best know where one should go, one should best know where they’ve been. As White Americans can look to the Roman Empire, we should also be able to look hundreds and thousands of years in the past to understand why and how we got here. I grew up in a majority-black education system in Chicago and spent almost my entire primary and secondary education there. In my schools, so little African history or culture was taught; I believe there were only one or two AP-level courses in African history. This meant that in a majority-black school, and likely many others, almost everything about Africa is taught either by the internet or the media, which could be biased. The key stakeholders involved in this change are parents, teachers, and even students. These are the most direct stakeholders as they are all interested in the quality of the students’ education. But from a bigger picture, everyone should be invested in such an educational reform. By learning more about one’s roots in school in a positive environment, it would lead to children growing with a greater sense of self-esteem. It would also motivate children to be more interested in school in general, both from the examples of ingenious ancestors and also because by learning about their ancestors, they can see more of themselves in school. In the same way that a typical American history class would teach a lot about European history, or a Chinese history class about Chinese history, seeing African history from a positive perspective could open the door for students to become interested in school in general.