PROJECTS/INITIATIVES
I am a strong believer in stepping up to lead and impact change, inspiring and empowering others to do the same, paving the road for those who might follow, and bringing as many as I can with me.
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In May 2023, I was selected as a youth delegate to attend the 2023 World Bank Group Youth Summit. This annual event is a unique opportunity for young leaders to come together and tackle the most pressing challenges facing our world today. I connected with like-minded individuals to collaborate on innovative ideas and solutions.
Established in 2013, the Youth Summit is the largest youth worldwide annual gathering at The World Bank Group. The primary goals are to:
- Empower youth to explore innovative ideas to tackle development challenges​.
- Provide youth with the tools to build and engage in impactful projects​.
- Promote dialogue between youth, the WBG, and other key stakeholders globally.
This year's summit was held May 25-26 (in Washington DC & virtual), and the 10th-anniversary theme is "From the Ground Up: Local Solutions to Drive Global Impact”.
I was honored to contribute to the goals and drive positive change.
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Founded by the United Nations Foundation in 2010, Girl Up works with a global community of partners to achieve gender equality worldwide. Girl Up Clubs are billed as champions for change that have had a huge impact on girls around the world, empowering both people in their own communities and adolescent girls in developing countries to rise up. Through education, fundraising, advocacy, and service, Girl Up Club members develop the leadership skills necessary to make a positive difference in the lives of girls everywhere.
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I founded and have led Bainbridge Island Girl Up since December 2018 to provide an exciting and unique opportunity for middle and high school girls on the island to engage and step up as leaders on behalf of all girls and women in the world. I also wanted to encourage high school members to serve as mentors to younger girls, and for the club to work with adult women and advisors to advocate on important issues. Finally, I wanted a forum where members could attend and represent Girl Up at local, national and international events, and learn or improve their advocacy, public speaking, fundraising, and event-planning skills.
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July 2019 - Attended Girl Up's global Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. with over 400 other girls from around the world. I was also a speaker who led an Inspire session about the worldwide CoderDojo movement and lobbied Congress to pass the Keeping Girls in School Act.
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December 2019 - Hosted Girl Up/UN Foundation representatives from Washington, D.C. at my robotics team leadership meeting to present on STEM for Social Good and gender equality.
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March 2020 - Purchased and donated hand sanitizer to community members who couldn't locate stock given the coronavirus pandemic. Also created and ran Quarantine Karaoke, a Facebook page designed to uplift and connect the worldwide community through music. In two weeks' time, the page grew to over 7000 followers who shared their performances from all over the world.
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April 2020 - Purchased hand sanitizer and donated to community members in need.
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June 2020 - Partnered with Girl Up Agiascalientes
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July 2020 - Partnered with Code Your Chances and Techgirlz Foundation to host workshops for girls ages 9-14 on creative uses for computer science.
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August 2020 - Hosted a giveaway of a Kano Windows10 PC to an underrepresented community member in need.
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October 2020 - Conceptualized and led a virtual Artificial Intelligence Mini-Conference and formed a partnership with West Sound CoderDojo and Code Your Chances to host it.
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July 2021 - Became Girls Ignited
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Other Bainbridge Island Girl Up initiatives, milestones, and activities
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The Space Generation Advisory Council is a global non-governmental, non-profit (US 501(c)3) organization and network based in Vienna Austria. It aims to represent university students and young space professionals ages 18 – 35 to the United Nations, space agencies, industry, and academia.
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I am a member as of February 2023.
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Changemakers Summit 2022 was a free virtual event held in March 2022 with a fireside chat and Q&A with girls and young women who are founders, entrepreneurs, activists, or in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) field and 25 years old and under. They live in Cyprus, Florida, Africa, New York, New Hampshire, and Washington State.
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I hosted this event to provide other girls and young women with the opportunity to hear from some of Girls Ignited's first 100 features about their paths, challenges, best practices, and thoughts about how others could navigate their passion projects, careers and educational pursuits, and more.
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The full video can be viewed at girlsignited.org.
​HarvardWECode 2021 Fellow I worked with a global team to help shape and increase the impact of the Harvard WECode: Women Engineers Code Conference, taking place on March 6-7, 2021. The annual conference, typically held at Harvard University, is the largest student-run women in tech conference in the world.
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Youth Leader Participant | Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Youth Forum, Jan 2021 - Present
The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Youth Forum is an annual initiative of the President of the Council and key platform where young people can contribute to policy discussions at the United Nations through their collective ideas, solutions, and innovations.
Since 2012, the Youth Forum has established itself as the largest gathering of young people at the United Nations bringing their views, ideas, solutions, and innovations to policy discussions on issues that matter to them.
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Generation Equality Forum | Youth Roundtable, Jan 2021
UN Women’s Generation Equality Campaign - Demanded equal pay, equal sharing of unpaid care and domestic work, an end to sexual harassment and all forms of violence against women and girls, healthcare services that respond to their needs, and equal participation in political life and decision-making in all areas of life.
Youth and adolescents, via Generation Equality, have been leading global movements for change, bringing renewed energy and opportunities for achieving a more equal world for all. The leadership and contributions of the new generation operated in partnership with advocates and visionaries of all ages and genders. This landmark effort brought together governments, corporations and change-makers from around the world to define and announce ambitious investments and policies - embarking on a 5-year journey to accelerate equality, leadership and opportunity for women and girls worldwide. This work will culminate in 2026.
Participated on the Youth Roundtable for Generation Equality Action Coalition for Technology and Innovation.
Joined October 2020, Chassis Subsystem
Husky Robotics is a Registered Student Organization at the University of Washington building a Mars Rover to compete in the international Rover Challenge Series. We placed 2nd in the world at our most recent competition, outscoring teams from Shanghai to Warsaw.
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Our team provides UW students the opportunity to develop their skills as part of a large interdisciplinary science and engineering project. We turn our member's passion for robotics, space, science and engineering into skills and experience, providing a unique opportunity for UW students to become experienced engineers.
I applied for a license to host TEDxBainbridgeIslandWomen and it was approved in August 2020 for a November 2020 event.
I felt TEDxBainbridgeIslandWomen was our chance to help move the conversation about the power of girls and women in a meaningful way. In addition to the curated talks supplied by TEDWomen 2020 Conference, we selected live speakers and two emcees from the Bainbridge Island community.
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I recruited and led other Executive Team members, recruited and coached all local speakers, and facilitated the outreach, promotion, production, and operations of the entire event.
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STEM for HER, formerly known as Women in Technology Education Foundation, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation, based in the Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C. area that promotes education to create awareness, excitement, and opportunities among girls and young women to pursue successful STEM-related careers. It provides funding for programs that foster STEM interest in girls and young women through field trips, speakers, programs and curriculum development, and contributes program resources for clubs and after school groups in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. that serve girls.
In January 2020, I approached its leadership about engaging younger girls on its boards or committees, and for feedback and collaboration on future initiatives. As a result, a group of high school and college STEM girls were invited by STEM for Her to brainstorm on programming and panels. I am the only participant on the West Coast.
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West Sound CoderDojo is a Licensed Regional Group under the global CoderDojo initiative's umbrella. It hosts biweekly sessions from September through July each year, and attendees of all ages learn to code at Western Washington University-Poulsbo in a collaborative, peer-to-peer environment. It is loads of fun, and I have been a Youth Mentor since the dojo launched in March 2015. Coding is one of the first true second languages of the 21st Century. Everyone should learn it and take advantage of the computational thinking and problem-solving skills it develops. What I also like in this mixed-gender setting is that participants become accustomed to working together at a young age, and this prepares them for the workplace.
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Special Projects
May 2020: Led a virtual Minecraft tutorial
September 2020: Led two Scratch games coding tutorials
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In May 2024, I was again selected as a youth delegate to attend the 2024 World Bank Group Youth Summit. This year's summit was held May 30-31 at the The World Bank Group headquarters in Washington DC (and virtual). The 11th-anniversary theme was Digital Inclusion, AI, and Sustainable Technology.
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Halfway through the 2030 Agenda, the contribution to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) progress is UN 2.0, a vision of a modernized UN system: with cutting-edge skills and forward-thinking culture for stronger results, better Member State support and greater SDG impact.
Leveraging our diversity, we are striving towards this vision with a powerful fusion of data, innovation, digital, foresight and behavioural science expertise – a dynamic combination that we call the “quintet of change”, grounded in a rejuvenated organizational culture.
My quote in response to this initiative was selected from submissions worldwide and is featured as one of the Voices on building and fostering foresight capacity. This means cultivating structured methods that help to navigate uncertainty, imagine better futures and chart new paths forward already today. It is about nurturing proactive mindsets and exploring possible futures, with tools such as horizon-scanning, trend analysis and scenario development to make better choices today.
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View my full quote here.
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This National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) summit was held in Denver and virtually May 18-19. I participated in three tracks, sharing some great resources and advice:
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Hidden in Plain View: Confronting Systemic Inequity in K12 CS Education
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PowerTilt: Power & Influence in Tech – Who has it? Who doesn’t? And how to distribute it intentionally?
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Using Inclusive Pedagogies and Technologies to Improve Student Performance and Experience
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NCWIT is the trusted source for research-based strategies that facilitate reform in computing classes and technical organizations. The NCWIT Summit is the world’s largest annual convening of change leaders focused on significantly improving diversity and equity in computing.
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The UN Innovation Network (UNIN) is an informal, collaborative community of UN innovators interested in sharing their expertise and experience with others to promote and advance innovation within the UN System. UNIN is open to innovators from all UN Entities as well as external partners and to date, 3,000 colleagues from 70+ UN Entities in over 140 countries have joined the Network.
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I am an Observer member as of February 2023.
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From December 2018 until July 2021, we operated as Bainbridge Island Girl Up, part of a United Nations hosted initiative. I felt we needed to make a change, so as of July 30, 2021, we became Girls Ignited. Our mission is to empower, inspire, and encourage girls and young women to be changemakers. Of any age. From anywhere.
Via nominations, we have featured over 200 girls and young women from around the world on Instagram, Facebook, and now, LinkedIn.
After 100 features I decided to host Changemakers Summit 2022, a moderated fireside chat and audience Q&A with five (5) girls and young women who had been featured.
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For now, we'll continue to focus on amplifying the millions of girls whose passions have been ignited. We will make strategic decisions about where it's best to lead, follow, or partner with like-minded organizations and initiatives as we move forward.
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The Power of 100 Girls - I founded and launched this organization in October 2020 so that 100 girls would form a Funding Circle and annually invest $100. They would then select girls and women or related nonprofits to receive grants and scholarships.
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I have a long and early history of philanthropy, youth leadership, and activism on issues related to education, leadership, gender equality, and so much more. Given my diverse experiences, I’ve come to truly appreciate the power and potential of being as transparent and objective as possible. With time and wisdom, we learn that the less than ideal situations we encounter are lessons and opportunities to step up and change the status quo.
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The Power of 100 Girls was an idea swirling around in my head for years and I now feel ready. My hope is that an intentional Founding Circle of inspired young changemakers will make the open-hearted decisions to support and fund girls, women, and related organizations working hard to make a difference in their lives and those of others.
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In December 2021, I launched our first grant award cycle for 2021-2022. After reviewing numerous applications from around the world, NEST4US of Virginia was chosen in February 2022 and awarded $1500 from funds raised through donations and sponsorships. For the 2022-2023 cycle, Redefine Z of Fremont, CA was chosen to receive a $2000 grant so it could continue its mission as a student-led social justice nonprofit to provide a platform for peaceful activism across the globe.
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Young Professional, Oct 2022 - Present
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Through networking, professional development programs, and leadership opportunities, UNA Young Professional members between the ages of 18 to 30 engage with other like-minded young adults in their community to support the vital mission of the United Nations.Through networking, professional development programs, and leadership opportunities, UNA Young Professional members between the ages of 18 to 30 engage with other like-minded young adults in their community to support the vital mission of the United Nations.
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Youth Member, Sep 2020 - Oct 2022
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The United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA) is a movement of Americans dedicated to supporting the United Nations. With over 20,000 members (60% under the age of 26) and more than 200 chapters across the country, UNA-USA members are united in their commitment to global engagement and their belief that each of us can play a part in advancing the UN’s mission and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Youth membership is dedicated to empowering and uplifting any U.S. citizen or resident between the ages of 12 - 25.
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In early August 2020, I was selected to be one of 1500 young change makers from around the world to form the inaugural YOUNGA Youth Delegation, a first-of-its-kind global youth takeover of the United Nations. We are provided with the opportunity to connect directly with world leaders, decision-makers and celebrity influencers to exchange ideas, develop action plans and build our network with entities such as World Bank, United Nations, World Health Organization, World Economic Forum, and more.
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Included were Innovation Mastermind sessions, live sessions that connect Youth Delegates directly with VIP speakers in an intimate immersive setting to discuss global challenges, co-create solutions and exchange ideas. Two of those were “Games for Good: Creating Immersive Solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) and “Young Action in an Old World”. Additional leadership events and forums are scheduled, including candid one-on-one main stage interviews with VIPs, and a global forum in late October open to all.
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Being a Youth Delegate is an opportunity to co-create solutions to urgent world challenges. Visit www.youngaforum.com for more details about this global community for change and empowering #NextGenLeaders. See certificate
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I joined the high school FIRST Robotics team in the Fall of 2018 and was on the mechanics subteam. It's been an amazing experience and I also participated in Girls Gen Robotics Competition.
In my sophomore year 2019), I became team leadership, remained on the mechanics subteam, and am team Quartermaster. During Girls Generation Robotics Competition in October 2019, I was on leadership and drive teams.
STEM is critically important to our world, and more girls and women should partake whether or not it's a career choice.
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Special Projects
April 2020: I did a 3D printer build, then printed dozens of surgical mask tension release bands for healthcare and other first responders in the community.
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May 2020: Print-tested Bellus mask frames (view here). An article explaining the process and goal here.
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Awards during my membership
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District Engineering Inspiration Award, PNW District Glacier Peak Event - 2020
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District Engineering Inspiration Award, PNW District Glacier Peak Event - 2019
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Reinvented Magazine is the nation's first print magazine written for women in STEM by women in STEM. Its mission is to reinvent the general perception of women in STEM fields while inspiring interest in STEM for young women nationwide, and break down barriers while telling the untold stories of brilliant and inspiring women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
I joined the Operations team in August 2019 when I was 14 years old because I felt it was an exciting opportunity to advance the cause of women in STEM and encourage girls to enter the field. The all-volunteer staff of Reinvented is comprised of girls who are in high school, college, and recent college graduates. I am, thus far, the youngest member of the team.
To date, I have represented the team at GeekWire Summit 2019 and at GeekGirlCon in November 2019.
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(Left Reinvented on March 9, 2020)
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In July 2019, I applied for a license to host TEDxYouth@BainbridgeIsland. It was approved in September 2019 and I built an Organizing Team of youth and adults to produce the event at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (BIMA) in February 2020. The theme is Youth in Action.
I felt it was critically important that we step up to shape our future, to speak up and prepare to lead on education, business, the arts, social justice, and more. Speakers and performers between the ages of 13-21 will take the stage to share their thoughts and efforts towards improving our community and the lives of those around them.
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In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxYouth@BainbridgeIsland, where x = independently organized TED event. At our TEDxYouth@BainbridgeIsland event, TED Talks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.
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While hosting a TEDx event is no guarantee that speaker talks will be approved and shared on the global TEDx YouTube channel, I am proud to say that all six of our speakers were approved. View their speaker talks.
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