High School: Poway High School
College: University of Southern California
We loved John’s Sunflower scholarship essay! When asked to describe the super power he’d most like to have, he responded with “the ability to turn any situation into an awkward one.” John believes that awkward moments bring us together and allow us to shed our insecurities and embrace those moments when we are united by our own humanity. But to look at John’s many accomplishments, he seems completely at ease and in control, incapable of an awkward misstep. John was a high school peer mentor through Peer Counseling and Link Crew, Academic Team Captain, National Honor Society President, a volunteer for GATE program and California Scholarship Federation tutoring, and active with the humanitarian aid organization Care Highway. His plate is equally as full at USC, where he’s involved with Jumpstart Readers, an internship with the pro-bono legal firm Public Counsel, Conquest Capital Ventures which directs funds to help budding social enterprises, Social Entrepreneurship Committee for USC Net Impact which uses business skills to support social and environmental causes, and works 20 hours a week for USC Dornsife Office of Advancement. How he finds time to excel academically and even add in a nautical sailing class to boot is beyond us, but John seems to embrace Chelsea’s “Go Big or go home” approach.
Words I live by:
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau