Showing up
for people.

I was chosen as president of the club at the end of my sophomore year — it had 15 members and was slowly fading. Immediately I secured sponsorships, a new teacher host, and rallied the officer team. We bought $500 of new equipment with sponsorships, assembled the 3rd-highest-rated team in the US, and brought more than 50 people together.

After our historic state championship victory, I focused on leaving a legacy: my senior year we organized the first annual Forsyth County Chess Championship — around 30 players from 6 of the 8 schools in the county. There is now a vibrant casual and competitive chess culture at South High.

At the end of my junior year I had a privileged choice: lead Mu Alpha Theta (the math honor society) or NEHS, as president. I chose NEHS because I had the freedom to start from scratch and imagine the organization as a whole. I established consistent monthly meetings, hosted the first-ever induction ceremony, and initiated the first annual Read-In — an evening of literature and English community building.

I also ran March Membean Madness, a vocabulary competition that involved all English classes and ~2,800 students from South High. The event caught national attention from Membean, and we received $600+ in prize sponsorships. I'm excited to see how this organization continues to grow.

This project meant a lot to me given my Russian and Ukrainian heritage. As my fourth humanitarian-aid-for-Ukraine project, I moved from volunteering to organizing. I communicated directly with donors, organized the logistics of delivering the bikes from Atlanta to Ukraine, collected and cleaned the bikes, and managed social media. We successfully delivered 70+ children's bikes to orphanages and schools in war-impacted areas.