ABC2 is a nonprofit who works to empower youth to change their communities. ABC2 started in my home county of Halifax County. At current, ABC2 just bought the old Dawson School to turn it into a climate resilience hub. They are also working to increase the number of Black respresentatives in Halifax County's local government. I’ve been a member of their board since 2021.

I spent the summer of 2022 in Jordan for an intensive Arabic study abroad program. I wanted to do that program because I studied Arabic in college, and wanted a chance to immerse myself in the language. While there, I made a lot of friends and developed a love for Jordan's culture.

The Center for Energy Education (C4EE) is a nonprofit whose goal is to make the solar industry better work for the communities that host solar farms. They train people to become solar installers and run education programs on solar energy. I was the first intern at C4EE back in 2018. I regularly updated the social media pages, compiled a list of over 300 people to invite to C4EE’s grand opening, and helped run C4EE’s original summer camps and teacher trainings. I came back as an intern in the summer of 2020. I have maintained a relationship with C4EE through the years, and occasionally help with their programs.

I worked at the National Renewable Energy Lab during the fall of 2020 developing a model to emulate and penetration test new energy grids. Penetration testing is basically where you try to find ways to hack a computer system. I figured out how to emulate blockchain supported transaction protocols for energy grids during my internship.

I’ve cared deeply about climate change and how it stands to impact the world since my Mom took me to watch the Inconvenient Truth when I was a kid. I vowed to myself in the 5th grade that I must figure out a way to stop climate change by 2016. Obviously, I wasn’t successful in that goal. By my sophomore year of college, however, I was increasingly disillusioned with the mainstream routes of advocacy championed as ways to combat climate change like calling elected officials, recycling, and composting. I joined the Sunrise Movement, a youth climate advocacy group, to try and fight for more rapid climate action. I also started sitting outside UNC’s administrative building in a climate change protest every Friday to demand UNC create a time bound sustainability plan. Once Covid hit, I moved to Warren County, NC. I helped start and run a Sunrise Movement Chapter there.

During the summer of 2018-2019, I had my first ever software engineering internship at Steelcase. Steelcase creates supportive and beautiful offices and office furniture. I worked on Steelcase’s legacy code, most of which was written in ABAP. Learning ABAP was particularly challenging because most of the variable names were abbreviated in German, and Steelcase had many internal functions that had no documentation. I learned how to really dig deep into unknown code in order to understand how things worked- a skill that I've been able to apply with any modern programming language as well. I additionally developed an entire new version of one of their outdated apps that is still in use today.