Her Impact

In one of my most beloved TED Talks, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes "the danger of the single story."

She explains that a single story is often built on power, the assumption that one kind of person is "greater than another." For me, one of the most persistent single stories has been the story of male dominance in STEM fields. This has been a challenge for me since elementary school.

I spent a large part of my early childhood at a chessboard. Around age nine, I began to understand something I hadn't fully noticed before: I was often the only girl in the room.

I am surrounded by boys at a chess tournament, visible but outnumbered. While it looks like a simple snapshot, for me it represents the quiet pressure of being treated like an exception before I even had the words to explain it.