Her box braids with thick beads clink as she sits down on the ground, wearing a mint green sweater, black joggers, and tan crocs with a gold chain across it and jibbitz filling the shoe. She begins to answer the questions being presented to her when her English teacher stumbles upon her. She halts speaking for a moment, looks up, smiles big and bright followed by a small wave, then continues back to the conversation like no pause happened. Vanessa Nwauwa – the founder of TechGurls club, marching band section leader, senior orchestra player, and varsity tennis & badminton player, has shown her dedication in every aspect of life since the age of eight years old.
Vanessa has been a part of the varsity tennis team all four years of high school. She has gone through a series of matches, some good, some horrible. But throughout this time, she came across her favorite moment, a match at Hinsdale South. “Most of us had already lost our game, considering how good that team was, but we had these two doubles players that were playing, and they were doing really good,” she continues ranting with a gentle but reminiscent smile, “Every time they made a point, we would clap once, and if they made a point again, we would clap twice. We kept adding a lot of claps for every point made.” This memorable moment held so much significance as Vanessa’s viewpoint on tennis and all sports in general altered, revealing a larger theme unknown before. “Just laughing the whole time and having fun, we realized it wasn’t all about winning the game. At that moment, we kind of just figured out, tennis was more than just a game for the sport. It was a way to connect with our friends.”
While Tennis has been prominent in Vanessa’s life the past four years and even some of her childhood, her current and future life will be consumed by technology. She explains where her interest lies now by saying, “I see myself definitely at a tech company of some sort, doing what I don’t know exactly. I’m really interested in the tech world and the new software that is coming out, like the security aspect of it.” Instead of waiting to achieve this goal after college, she seized her moment now by writing “a research paper on AI safety. I’d say that’s something that I’m doing now, and being able to present it in person at a tech conference in San Diego is something that I feel is like pushing me more towards my future.”
As a very passionate person for school and a career, she still goes through difficult moments that feel like the world is collapsing on her. She proudly states, “oh child who doesn’t give up?” One of the moments she almost gave up was during a tennis match and “at that moment when you are playing that game, it’s you against somebody else”. The fear filled her mind as she is alone and her only focus is her opponent and the ball that flies across the court. “You really have to depend on yourself at that point. And many times I wanted to give up in that sense, because it’s like you thought you’d have someone there to support you,” she explains with sadness filling her voice.
Through all the easy and difficult moments, Vanessa fills her mind with her culture, the one that reminds her to follow her parents example and impact the community as much as you can. “My culture impacts how I look at things I do, especially since my parents were so adamant on being helpful and more of being like a community with other people,” she follows with,”I try and tend to lean towards community. I volunteer for an organization that helps teach seniors how to use technology and it definitely impacts how I view the world.”She shouts out her biggest inspiration “my music teacher, Miss Wilkes. She’s really passionate about the music that she gives us, especially since we’re such a small orchestra class. For her to have so much passion for us is a really big motivator.” Vanessa is only beginning to make an impact on the world and with the years to come she will be the person you search and find in essays and articles all over the world.
