School achievements, community service, leadership, and/or work experience:

I’ve done community service mainly through my school’s key club program creating personalized trinkets and crafts to send to hospitals/elder homes. Through the club, I would also go to events physically either helping distribute food for food drives or passing out flyers. Within the club itself, I got involved via planning on what volunteering opportunities to do and realistic ways of how to properly conduct them. I also volunteered via an online platform called Zooniverse in which I would contribute to scientific studies by helping train and develop certain programs/providing data that fit the specific needs of said study. The one I spent the most time on was one in which I had to identify both the species and location of different types of corals in the ocean. This information would then be fed into an AI algorithm to help marine biologists identify corals on a much larger scale with better accuracy than humans could manage. I decided on identifying corals because even though climate change is such a large issue, more niche consequences such as coral bleaching get overlooked. Regarding leadership, I help create plans and teach lectures for my school’s SAT/ACT Prep Club as its vice president. As there were a lot of variables such as whether they had SAT fee waivers, their time availability to study outside of club time, and their current academic level, I created google forms to help keep track of individual needs and performance. I used this information along with planning with other club officers to help maximize the efficiency of the club. Additionally, I planned study groups and helped teach underclassmen for my school’s Mu Alpha Theta club. This was for overall math knowledge acquisition, but also to achieve better results in local math competitions. 

A significant amount of my time is spent taking care of my grandma. As she has dementia that is quickly worsening, she can’t be left alone for any period of time as she could wander off/potentially hurt herself. Additionally, my dad has switched to working the second shift which means I’m responsible for her during this time. Some responsibilities include cooking her food while also making sure she doesn’t eat too much since she forgets she ate which can lead to stomach issues, making sure she doesn’t misuse appliances and start a fire, and making sure she doesn’t go out alone. These issues are accentuated by the fact she used to cook and live across the street (4 lanes) from where we currently live. 

Due to this, I don’t have time for time intensive extracurriculars like sports, so it’s currently limited to hour-long clubs after school that fit my interests and schedule. I also go to the gym early in the morning (4 a.m.) or late at night and study for future tests/exams (AP, AICE, Actuarial). I’ve also done community service mainly through my school’s key club program creating personalized trinkets and crafts to send to hospitals/elder homes. I would also go to events physically either helping distribute food for food drives or passing out flyers. I also volunteered via an online platform called Zooniverse in which I could contribute to scientific studies by helping train and develop certain programs/providing data that fit the specific needs of said study. The one I spent the most time on was one in which I had to identify both the species and location of different types of corals in the ocean. This information would then be fed into an AI to help marine biologists identify corals on a much larger scale with better accuracy than humans could manage. Regarding leadership, I help create plans and teach lectures for my school’s SAT/ACT Prep Club as its vice president. I also created google forms to help keep track of individual needs and performance. I used this information along with planning with other club officers to help maximize the efficiency of the club. principle, but the issue still stands. After getting a job as an actuary and having a steady career, I hope to eventually open my own actuarial firm that also offers free lectures and consulting regarding finances. Although I can’t force anyone to learn financial literacy, I hope to make it cheap and easily accessible if they choose to do so.

As a resident of Cape Coral, describe an issue facing our city (or youth) and how you would solve it.

An issue facing Cape Coral and one I want to help resolve is the lack of financial illiteracy amongst both the old and new generation. Rather than trying to tackle issues like homelessness or hunger, I wanted to focus on something that would result in a more qualitative change. I decided on financial illiteracy as it not only relates to my career (actuary), but is also an issue I feel is heavily underrepresented. Even if people rave on about the importance of financial literacy, the people who really need it likely won’t see it. For instance, when I was talking with my dad about his finances for Fafsa, I realized he had almost a quarter million in debt. Even more so than the debt however, was his mindset about it. He would brush it off saying everyone had debt and this was simply how life was. While I do concede the notion that most people have debt, I believe it’s still a poor mindset and normalizing debt is a significant issue. I’ve since helped him budget to try and pay off more of the principle, but the issue still stands. For a large number of people, financial literacy extends to merely earning money and spending money. Speaking in generalization, people don’t live within their means which often snowballs into issues like no savings, no retirement investments, and unending debt. For instance, many consider credit (cards) as an extension of their own money instead of debt and fail to pay it off in full or even incur the 20% interest late fee. Despite constantly living paycheck to paycheck or below paycheck, they continue to live an unsustainable lifestyle. Although there are of course exceptions, the majority of people under these circumstances only continue to bury themselves with poor financial decisions which is brought about by poor financial literacy. With respect to solving this issue, I believe that as I am right now, with limited reach and rapport in my community, there is little weight my words can convey. For this reason, I plan to first get a job as an actuary. Once I’ve gotten enough experience to go independent, I hope to eventually open up my own firm which will offer free lectures and consulting regarding finances. Although I can’t force anyone to learn financial literacy, I hope to make it cheap and easily accessible if they choose to do so. This will naturally be a long process, but as long as one financially literate person teaches their kids, friends, family, etc. and the cycle repeats, the literacy rate can increase. And if that one person became literate as a result of my firm, I’d consider it a success.

What is your passion and how did you discover it?

My passion lies in getting into the intricacies of a topic I’m interested in and seeing if I can optimize/improve it. Although it’s not a passion in the sense of one topic/ideal, I think I’d be disingenuous to simply pick one for brevity’s sake as the thing I’m most interested in changes every couple years or even multiple times a year. This usually manifests in the form of games, particularly MMOs due to their inherent nature, but recently I’ve found myself getting involved with statistical data and models hence my interest in actuarial science. This passion has also led to me getting involved in various communities and meeting new people which has broadened my views as I’ve met people from different countries and cultures. I feel that it’s fairly easy to become stuck in a bubble with limited world views especially since your formative years are mainly constructed via family structures and local interactions. For this reason, I try to continue leveraging wherever my passions lead me to and continue to grow my own perspective.