I was adopted from China at 11 months and lived in a smallish town near Aspen up until 6th grade. There I attended a small charter school there which first exposed me to my passion for academia and meaningful education. In 2018, my family moved to Boulder, Colorado for a variety of reasons, including my growing hunger for impactful and real world applicable education. I started attending the Watershed School in 6th grade and the schools commitment to crafting students who are both curious and capable kept me there through my senior year of High School. I’m currently beginning my career in higher education at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, with an intended major in a combination of Architecture and Government and the long term objective of working at the intersection of infrastructure policy and socially/environmentally conscious design.

Outside of education, I’m deeply passionate about art, athletics, and advocacy. Being raised in the Rocky Mountains, I was exposed to outdoor education and experiences from a young age. These experiences fostered a deep love for both nature and outdoor sports. However, I quickly came to realize that outdoor recreation simply isn’t equitable and they’re few high level athletes that share my perspectives and experiences. Today, I’m committed to sharing the wonderful aspects of outdoor sports with historically underrepresented and disenfranchised groups in hopes of diversifying and expanding the world of outdoor athletics. During the summer of 2023 I participated in Wilderness Tours OKS Keeners program, gaining my Wilderness First Aid, CPR, and Swiftwater Rescue Certifications. I also volunteered with Diversify Whitewater, a non-profit committed to increasing access to paddlesports for BIPOC, and who I currently work for as their communications intern. Additionally, this past summer I completed the shooting of my upcoming short documentary on whitewater kayaking and identity in conjunction with ByKids, a non-profit supporting youth in telling their stories through film. The film explores many of the struggles for belonging in predominately white outdoor spaces and within their respective lifestyles. It is penned to premiere in the early summer of 2025. In the future, I hope to continue to develop my whitewater kayaking skills and experience with the goal of working as a kayaking coach for disenfranchised groups, along with to utilizing my passion for art and film to share stories at the intersection of outdoor spaces and DEI.

On a broader level, art, including literature, is a means to express that which words often cannot capture, and it lends itself to the subjectivity and multi-perceptivity inherent in conversations surrounding identity, belonging, and justice. Thus, it is a natural medium for me to simultaneously explore my experiences and perspective while also serving as a comforting practice that I can rely on. My childhood, marked by the burgeoning of experiences which often left me feeling isolated, is riddled with early explorations into critical consciousness in creative spaces. Hours spent tinkering with paper in my home studio or paper mache at school allowed me to simply exist without pretense and redirected the focus onto the viewer and their respective interpretation. Today, while my art does not always exist in the formal or professional realm, it remains a consistent practice for managing the requirements placed on me by a society often unwilling to acknowledge its exclusionary tendencies. It also works as a tool that, when strategically used, can speak to a humanist perspective that the rational brain often overlooks.

As you can likely tell, I have a very diverse set of passions, interests, and commitments. Much of my life consists of sitting in a liminal space between often disjointed things and I’m constantly surprised, horrified, and inspired by what this particular perspective can reveal. I believe deeply in the power of interconnection and I have faith in the capability of the human mind and spirit.