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Prior to starting Curious Cardinals, I was pursuing a major in Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Computer Science at Stanford University. In 2019, I graduated with a GPA in the top 1% at Harvard Westlake while juggling various extracurricular activities ranging from aviation to soccer. In my junior year of high school, I won an $8,000 grant to start Soles4Good, a social microenterprise that sources and provides shoes to Senegal’s street youth. I also received my pilot license in high school and served as captain of the Harvard-Westlake school varsity soccer team. At Stanford, I won awards from Nasa for a satellite I designed and worked for Stanford’s GPS Lab and Lockheed Martin as one of the only undergraduate researchers. When I am not working or speaking to Curious Cardinals students, mentors, or parents, I love watching soccer (Liverpool), running while listening to podcasts, reading, or spending time with friends! Curious Cardinals has been featured on CNN, the Today Show, and in Forbes highlighting our vision to create a community of lifelong learners and doers. After a year of bootstrapping the business to $600k+ of annual revenues, Curious Cardinals has now raised $6.8 million in seed funding and employs a team of 12, including experience designers, software engineers, marketers, and educators. I was recognized in the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 Education and Youngest category.
A book that deeply impacted me is Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus, which opened my eyes to the transformative power of microfinance to lift communities out of poverty through entrepreneurship. Inspired by Yunus’s mission, I founded Soles4Good.org in high school, a nonprofit that empowers marginalized youth in Senegal to launch shoe kiosks using microfinance. This experience shaped my passion for creating meaningful change—something I feel incredibly fortunate to continue pursuing at Curious Cardinals.
On career day at JTD (my elementary school), I was paired with Javier Arango, whose passion for learning and flying ignited a spark in me that changed my trajectory. Javier became my flight instructor and helped me get my pilot’s license at Van Nuys airport, which inspired me to study Aerospace Engineering at Stanford. Javier’s mentorship inspires me daily as I strive to ignite a similar passion for learning in Curious Cardinals students.
Lifelong learning
I am obsessed with continuous growth and lifelong learning. I enjoy learning new tools/technologies, reading about the market, and speaking to customers more than anything. I value feedback and l enjoy collaboration. Nothing feels better than a high five in the office after solving a complex problem or celebrating a small win.
I was an aerospace engineer once. I apply my problem-solving engineering mentality to the problems we face in the business. I love finding scrappy ways to empower our business to run more efficiently, effectively, and smoothly.
Curious Cardinals exists because every child deserves to explore their passions and discover what makes them feel most fulfilled in life.
I hope that Curious Cardinals becomes “the passion place”, embedding itself in the social infrastructure of the world - how students discover, pursue, and dream.
The problem we are solving is that school is no longer relevant to students - so, we are starting with mentorship on topics ranging from aerospace engineering to filmmaking, but working to redefine the education model for K-12 students as our longer term vision.
