I was born into an engineering family: my dad is a civil engineer and works in wastewater management in Burton, New Brunswick, where I grew up. I was interested in building and creating things from a young age. In middle school, I spent many hours in my school’s makerspace, where students could experiment with tools, arts and craft supplies, and tech materials like wires and computers. We had a bunch of little robots with LED displays. I zip-tied them to a display and coded them to light up intermittently; they looked like fireflies lighting up the sky. I presented my creation at the Brilliant Labs Makerspace Fair in Fredericton, where students from across the province share what they’ve built. It was inspiring to be around other students my age who were using their creativity to construct things.

The makerspace really opened my eyes to the world of coding, and when I started high school, I took all the computer science courses my school offered. In one course, I used the programming language Python to code a game for eight-to-10-year-olds where a bumblebee collects pollen from flowers to use as currency to purchase upgrades and expand the universe. In Grade 12 I got involved in student government and organized a COVID-friendly haunted house and monthly bingo in the cafeteria.

Outside of school, I enjoy curling, which I started playing when I was nine. In 2022, I played for New Brunswick’s provincial junior curling team. We won several championships in the under-18 and under-21 leagues. Learning how to navigate team dynamics was........

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