Stanford University welcomes graduate applications from individuals with a broad range of experiences, interests, and backgrounds who would contribute to our community of scholars. We invite you to share the lived experiences, demonstrated values, perspectives, and/or activities that shape you as a scholar and would help you to make a distinctive contribution to Stanford University. My ideas of the world come as much from learned experiences as lived experiences. I've always seeked out connection and conversations with the communities I'm a part of and I truly believe that the one of the most important ways to learn is by understanding people. There are certain themes and perspectives that have transcended cultural and class boundaries and those have left a deep impact on me. I have always been a people pleaser and I find it incredibly hard to say no to others. But a couple of incidents in my life taught me the importance of being true to what I believed and standing by my core values. When I was setting up my second after school learning center as part of my non-profit I had to negotiate for a space with a local leader with a rich criminal history. I was able to establish a connection with him and he allowed us access to the "Community Center" in the area. For the first few months, things went smoothly and the children were doing well. Slowly though, the leader started to get more involved and placed demands on how things should go and who should participate. The moment we deviated from our process and core ideas though the children just could not thrive. I faced a similar experience with some of our investors at my startup CraterClub. There were points in our journey where we had not found Product Market Fit but we were pushed into a growth at all costs mindset which at the end contributed to our failure. While it can be hard to say no particularly to those in authority or power I realised that it's important to stay true to your process and values. Relationships are the key to transformation. I believe that a community is only as strong as the number of individual associations it fosters. At our learning center a boy who had just returned from a juvenile detention center after stabbing someone wanted to participate. It was a difficult time for us all accepting him and we all feared him. Community members and children alike were not keen for him to participate but we stayed true to our principle of inclusion. Over time as we connected with him he emerged as one of our strongest supporters in the area and would use his experience to advise other children. His inclusion had made our space further thrive. A similar experience occurred with our engineering team at CraterClub. The pandemic made it very difficult to build individual connections and there was an undercurrent of tension and collaboration was often lacking. Our shared interest in DotA (a multiplayer online game) helped us build bonds and the moment we spent time getting to know one another our throughput drastically increased. Throughout my life I have tried to strengthen the communities I'm a part of by helping build connections. During college, I started an initiative to have Chai with strangers. I invited my neighbours and fellow students and even set up a website for strangers to sign up and come have chai together. My most enjoyable memories of college have been from these interactions and I made some of my closest friends this way. At Stanford, I see an opportunity to learn from the vibrant community and I'm excited about the potential collaborations and the diverse perspectives that I could learn from. I aspire to continue to create spaces for connection and learning and I am eager to bring this passion to Stanford.