Office of Merit Scholarships, Fellowships & Awards (OMSFA)

I am a junior at the University of Washington studying Informatics, with interests in product development and entrepreneurship. I transferred from Bellevue College, and growing up in Jakarta as an international student shaped the way I see education. I try to treat school less as a checklist to finish and more as a set of tools to build with.
What interests me most is understanding how people experience the systems and technology around them. I enjoy sitting with a problem long enough to understand who is struggling and why, then building something that helps make their experience simpler. I worked with a team on a tool that helps Washington community college students understand how their credits transfer to UW, a process that confused me when I went through it myself and one I did not want to leave confusing for the next student. I have also interned in AI and cybersecurity, and this summer I will be joining a business consulting firm to better understand how ideas turn into real decisions inside organizations. Away from coursework, you will usually find me on a tennis court or hunting down a good cup of coffee. I applied for the Spence Transfer Fund because transferring is harder than it often appears. Much of it is the quiet process of adapting, rebuilding confidence, and proving to yourself that you belong in a new environment. To me, this scholarship represents recognition of that journey and encouragement to keep pushing forward.

In the near term, this support allows me to invest more deeply in my coursework, projects, and professional growth. Looking further ahead, I hope to build products that make complicated systems easier for everyday people and someday create something of my own that can do this at a larger scale.