I attended an all-girls school from Kindergarten to 8th grade. My experience at my school shaped my can-do attitude; we were always told that as girls, we can do anything—and I wholeheartedly embraced the idea to "rise to the challenges of our time." However, this also meant that I was learning and growing inside of a bubble. When I would occasionally leave that bubble to attend programming workshops and local STEM festivals with my family, my awareness expanded. I saw that the world, especially the tech industry in Silicon Valley, does not reflect the small but supportive world of my all-girls school. 

I've only begun to unpack what it's like to be a girl, and now a young woman, in STEM, and I continue to actively seek out women role models, or in general, the very representation of my identity in STEM. 

Now, I hope to encourage more girls to break the barriers around becoming women in STEM: both the stigma and the lack of resources or support. As the president of the Girls Who Code Club at my high school, I reached out to girls who had no background in computer science but wanted to learn from the ground up in a supportive environment. Through lessons, workshops, and projects that I designed, these girls learned basic programming concepts with the club. I also recognized how important it is to see one's future in STEM, so through Women in Tech presentations, I gave club members a chance to learn about inspiring female role models (the very representation that I was searching for as a middle school student). I also led and developed two affinity spaces, one being the inaugural Women Empowerment (Female-Identifying) Affinity Space through my high school's first affinity spaces program, and the other being the Girls in STEM affinity group that I led alongside my computer science teacher.

I was also a member of an all-girls robotics team that was founded by both the Girl Scouts of America and NASA, doubling as a Girl Scout troop. As a leader of this robotics team, I led many outreach events and spoke at NorCal Girl Scout events to inspire the next generation of girls in STEM: young Girl Scouts (as young as 4 years old). I taught them about electrical engineering and programming, demonstrating what they are capable of, too, using the example of my team's yearly competition robot builds.

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