About Me

I am 17 years old and ambitious. I dream of many things, but let’s start close to home, in San Jose, California.

Living in the heart of Silicon Valley, there is naturally an abundance of opportunity, just waiting to be taken. The city is always animated and alive, from the bagel vendor on the streets of Downtown every morning, to the brisk corporate worker buying from him. The city felt like a well-oiled, industrial machine; each one of us essential to our city’s cosmopolitan infrastructure.

In contrast to a real machine, where each nail, each screw, each washer is assigned a predetermined place, I felt like a spare piece in the vast city. I struggled to find a place where I fit and played a meaningful part in a community.

However, through the course of a human event called life, time held the answer. In my case, time diagnosed me with a chronic and life-altering disease: Inflammatory Bowel Disease. At 14, every facet of my life was altered. At 16, I found meaning to my diagnosis. I wasn’t unlucky to be apart of the 1% with IBD, I was gifted. My purpose was embedded in my genetics.