A Particle of Possibility: My Journey from Observation to Action in STEM Diversity

There’s a stillness I remember from long nights under the fluorescent lights of my high school robotics lab—a quiet hum of focus punctuated by the gentle clicks of test circuits and teammates whispering code syntax across makeshift workbenches. In that cramped room in a bustling immigrant neighborhood of Chicago, we spoke more Python than English. Our families hailed from Nigeria, Bangladesh, Chile, and Ukraine. We built machines, yes—but more importantly, we built a collective hope, powered by science and a shared dream of inclusion in a world that seldom saw us.

I’ve always gravitated toward order and questions. Physics was more than formulas—it was a language I understood intuitively, a roadmap of how things fall apart and stitch themselves back together. So, when I stumbled across the article describing CERN's “25 by ’25” initiative, an effort to increase gender and nationality diversity among its scientific staff, something stirred in me. A particle, finally seen.

I had always imagined institutions like CERN as distant galaxies—brilliant, infinite, and far removed from the chaos of my daily life. Yet here they were, pulling scientists from 110 nations into their gravitational field, creating deliberate space for underrepresented voices. They were trying. And achieving. Nearly 25% of their scientific roles were now held by women, and long-standing disparities in nationality concentrations had begun to shift. I read it twice, then again, highlighting phrases like “Conscious Hiring” and “diversity dashboards,” committing them to the part of my brain reserved for futures I wanted.

But this story doesn’t begin with a headline from Switzerland. It started when Mrs. Sok, the Cambodian-born computer science teacher who taught me recursion and resilience, was told her contract wouldn’t be renewed. Budget cuts, they said. I remember the hollowness in her smile as she packed her desk. It was the same emptiness I saw on the faces of my undocumented teammates who’d aged out of youth programs funded by DEI grants that had quietly disappeared over the last year. These weren’t policy footnotes—they were absences, real as gravity.

In the wake of those losses, I founded “Loop Inclusion,” a student-led mentorship initiative aimed at retaining students from immigrant and minority backgrounds in advanced STEM courses. My goal was audacious but clear: to make sure no future physicist walked away because she couldn’t imagine herself belonging. We organized coding nights in multiple languages, formed alliances with local community colleges, and hosted panels with immigrant engineers, some of whom had carved unlikely paths into labs like Fermilab or MIT.

Each week, I'd arrive early to set out chairs in a borrowed classroom, making sure the projector worked and snacks were set out—chips, samosas, papusas—flavors of home from distant homes. Each week, more students came.

The world isn't always kind to newcomers—be they students or scientists. But at CERN, I saw possibility over tokenism. Progress over platitude. They proved that change doesn’t require perfection, just persistent intention. They appointed diversity officers. They required active reflection during hiring—not just credentials, but value in varied perspectives.

That mindset changed me. No longer was I content being merely the “most likely to ace the AP Physics exam.” I wanted to be the most likely to lift others alongside me. I wanted to help rewrite the algorithms that decide whose voices matter in the lab and whose stories make it into the textbooks.

As I apply to institutions like yours—ones that value both intellect and empathy—I carry the lessons from the luminous minds at CERN and my teammates from the lab’s corner desk. I carry conviction powered not just by equations, but by equity.

In the diverse orbit I now inhabit, I am no longer an observer. I am a catalyst.

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Reference Sources
CERN: 25 by '25 Initiative – https://home.cern/news/news/cern/25-25-initiative-diversity-progress-cern
Beyond100K 2025 Trends Report – https://beyond100k.org/2025-beyond100k-trends-report/