Impact

I have been fortunate to have mentors and teachers that have taught me skills I can use to help others. Sometimes that is on a small scale like tutoring math to individual students at my school, and sometimes my impact can be felt in a bigger way through large programs like my project with the Escondido Union School District and the printing of face shields for health care workers during the pandemic that are described below.

District Wide After School Robotics Program for Underserved Students

When I was in 4th grade, I wanted to start a robotics team at my school. Unfortunately, the school did not have enough funding to pay teachers for after school programs. So, I convinced my friends to start a community team in my family’s garage.

Ever since then, for the past eight years, I have recruited members with diverse skills and backgrounds to build a team culture of mutual respect and collaboration. With unique personalities and skill sets in programming, communication, design, strategy, art, and manufacturing on the team, we are constantly learning from each other as we collaborate to develop our solution to the season’s game challenge.

I have received so much from my robotics community, and I want to give back what I have received – and even more if possible! So, for the past two years, I have worked to make sure every kid in my district has the opportunity to have STEM, and in particular, robotics after school programs.

I connected with my local Escondido Union School District and advocated for the district to direct $150,000 to a new robotics after school program and recruited a team of volunteers to support each school through the program. I wanted this program to be sustainable for many years to come, even after I graduate. So I delivered a workshop to train twenty teachers from eleven different schools, and my team and I mentor the students and teachers at their schools every week.

From these eleven schools, seven competitive FIRST Lego League teams were formed and competed in the fall of 2023! It was incredible to see the kids, and their families, have so much fun at the tournament and to know that I've been able to touch so many lives with this program.

However, my advocacy didn’t stop here. I have also traveled to the California State Capitol and the U.S. Capitol to advocate directly to the staff offices of senators and representatives for increased funding for STEM education initiatives like ours. It makes me so happy to see that, through all of these efforts, I am giving kids in my community the opportunity to explore their passion for robotics at their schools in a way that wasn’t available to me.

COVID-19 Face Shield Production

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in the spring of 2020, the entire world shut down, and everyone, except those working in essential jobs, went into lock down. With patient counts rising at hospitals, and health care workers needing more personal protective equipment (PPE) than ever before, a shortage of face masks and face shields became a crisis.

With access to 3D printers, many in the robotics community began to produce face shields for health care workers, and I wanted to join the effort. My brother and I made and distributed over 1,000 face shields to local nursing homes and hospitals in order to help protect the health of those risking their lives for others. It was great to have played a small part in helping our community face the challenges of the pandemic.