Learning about Agape love, the love that gives without expecting anything in return, forever altered the way I live my life. As a Girl Scout, I've been participating in community service nearly all my life. Earning a Bronze Award by building a lending library in my community, and a Silver Award by replenishing an underserved elementary school garden in West Oakland, inspired my Gold Award project (the highest award a Girl Scout can earn). My passion project focused on creating a sustainable solution to a real-world issue, aligning with my passion for gardening and the environment. In particular, I worked on the restoration of an urban ecosystem by collaborating with three urban farms located across East Bay Area communities to plant trees, build pollinator corridors, and educate communities that have historically been subject to redlining on the importance of gardening and nutrition. Completing 100 or more service hours is a graduation requirement at my school. I am proud to be joining my school's 301 Club (a club for students who have served triple the required service hours). I also had the opportunity to serve as a volunteer in a small village in the Costa Rican mountains. I worked on service projects such as rebuilding a community center and community garden, and participated in an invaluable cultural exchange. Although the trip meant traveling alone to another country where I didn’t speak the language and fundraising for months to afford it, I knew the challenges would be worth it if I could improve my Spanish, learn more about environmental conservation, and positively impact other communities. This experience taught me that agape love isn’t limited by comfort, but instead it pushes you to persist when solutions aren’t obvious, and serve even when no one’s watching. As I enter higher education, I require as much financial assistance with tuition as possible. This past year, my father lost his business, and we were forced to all rely on my mom’s income. My parents already struggle to pay my older brother’s college tuition and support a life amidst inflation in the Northern California Bay Area. The college debts they’ve accumulated have significantly hindered their financial situations, impacting their ability to pay for my college tuition, and I’m desperate to find ways to pay for my tuition for my financial future. In my community, I work to keep youth safe from bullying, whether in person or online by educating them on its impacts. Specifically, from working at my local daycare I learned the impact I could have on the students I worked with not only as a role model, but as an older teen who understands the exact position they’re in. whether it was breaking up physical fights and/or disagreements, gently and patiently working through emotional bullying/conflicts, or learning how each of them interacted with the media and consistently giving micro-lectures about social media etiquette as they all navigated their introduction to it. Overall, serving others has given me the space to grow as a person, make amazing connections, and understand the world beyond my own lived experience. Agape taught me that love isn’t passive. My service projects taught me how to live it, and my compassion became the way I carry it into classrooms, laboratories, and my community. Whether through pausing and listening to the needs and conflicts people in my community were experiencing, or offering consistent lectures to the students I worked with over the summer, I am dedicated to keeping our youth safe from the dangers of bullying, whether in person or online.

I sat in awe, holding onto every word Father Leo spoke. The golden rays of the early evening sun forced their way through the windows lining the retreat walls. He explained the idea of agape, a love that gives without expecting anything in return and, like the sun, shines on everyo... unconditionally. It wasn’t just his words that struck me, but the realization that someone had finally put into words everything I aspired to be. Father Leo’s explanation of the imperativeness of giving reminded me of the opportunity I had to volunteer by working on service projects in a small village in the Costa Rican mountains. Although the trip meant traveling alone to another country where I didn’t speak the language and fundraising for months to afford it, I knew the challenges would be worth it to improve my Spanish, learn more about environmental conservation, and positively impact other communities. Costa Rica taught me that agape love isn’t limited by comfort, but it pushes you to persist when solutions aren’t obvious, and serve even when no one’s watching. I saw love transcend language and borders, and realized that resilience, collaboration, creativity, and curiosity can turn compassion into impact. Stepping into the unknown pushed me to think creatively and quickly, much like problem-solving in engineering. At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, researching bacteriophage, learning about microelectronics, and developing my Python skills felt like learning a new language again. But curiosity kept me diving deeper into what I didn’t understand, collaboration helped me ask and offer help to others, creativity inspired new approaches, and resilience reminded me to keep going. BLDAP, along with books like Neri Oxman’s novel on material ecology, and Professor Yao’s works on microelectronics, helped me understand the impact scientific research has on our society and our future. It inspired me to pursue Mechanical engineering, as it would allow me to combine my interests in sustainability, energy efficiency, and automotive mechanics to pursue my goals of innovating the next generation of biofuel-powered cars in motorsport and transforming material technology from the nano-scale to the quantum-scale. Particularly, what inspired me was our exploration of how machine learning combined with chemical spectroscopy could be used to identify plausible solutions for biofuel discovery in a more time-efficient and cost-effective way. Beyond solidifying my interest in engineering, BLDAP gave me something even more meaningful – the confidence to see myself thriving as a woman of color in a STEM career. I am grateful to be continuing my apprenticeship with LBNL throughout this school year. I am currently using the Arduino sensors from our engineering design challenge and applying them to my Girl Scout Gold Award project to record pollinator data throughout Oakland to educate the community and advocate for more pollinator plants in redlined communities. My interest grew through my role as a student research assistant for Professor Bryan Brown’s AI research at Stanford University, connecting schools with his team as they develop an AI teaching model. Working on this project strengthens my communication, collaboration, and organizational skills. Agape taught me that love isn’t passive. It builds, serves, and creates – principles that reflect what I think is at the heart of engineering. Although it began as something Father Leo described, Costa Rica taught me how to live it, and STEM became the way I carry it into classrooms, laboratories, communities, and the future I hope to build. Agape inspires me to be an engineer for humanity, building hope and systems that serve. This scholarship will help me achieve this dream by not allowing my financial situation impact the change I strive to make.