I’ve been telling stories for as long as I can remember. In middle school, I wrote five-paragraph essays to convince my mom I deserved to spend the evening on my friend’s trampoline. By high school, I stayed up late with my best friend writing proposals for a nonprofit we wanted to start, communicating others’ stories in hopes of receiving donations.

That passion for persuasion and storytelling evolved into professional storytelling in the military. Shortly after finishing high school, I was proud to join a highly selective career field and complete the Intermediate Photojournalist Course with the Defense Information School. There, I mastered the fundamentals of journalism: AP Style, feature writing, and the skills needed to craft stories that captivate and inform. 

My most notable memory from my time in the Air Force occurred shortly after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. The withdrawal triggered mass chaos, with Afghans scrambling onto airfields in hopes of fleeing safely. In response, the Air Force conducted large-scale evacuation operations, and within one week, the flightline at the largest Air Force base in Germany had been converted into a refugee camp housing 15,000 Afghans. 

Within two weeks, I was deployed on a flight to Ramstein Air Base, Germany. During my month there, I wrote and released seven stories, edited and released 120 photos, and produced and edited a three-minute feature story.