Sometimes, it seems like Tina Mai’s life runs at 2x speed. At 15, she became an internationally published poet when her poetry was published by the Atlanta Review. At 16, Tina developed her first app, Finaci-All, winning first place in the World Series of Innovation challenge for fintech, an international competition sponsored by Mastercard. Financi-All was featured on SMES.org and lauded for its professional graphics and use of AI algorithms. At 17, she published her own poetry book, featuring her poems that have been awarded Scholastic gold medals and published internationally. Tina also recently became a member of TKS (The Knowledge Society), which brings together like-minded, ambitious young innovators that want to change the world. Currently, in addition to TKS, Tina is pursuing independent computer science projects, following her motto of “learn by working.”
Tina is also a freelance website designer and has designed countless websites, ranging from non-profit groups to start-ups and companies to her own personal website. While Tina has always been artistic, being the absolute master of craft kits in middle school, (and having stunning handwriting), she became interested in graphic design in high school when playing around with a software called Figma, usually used for app mockups. Tina’s own passion for art fueled her desire to help other young people display their creativity. Her second app, VAST (Voice-Accessible Story Technology), aimed to help visually-impaired youth write creative stories using dictation. With VAST, Tina won the Congressional App Challenge for our congressional district. As a result, her app is now displayed in the US Congress and was announced on TV by Mike Levin. The app was featured in the Applied Arts magazine for its exceptional graphic design and animated features. Tina also created the first magazine featuring student art and writing at St. Margaret’s since 2009, titled Visions: Literary & Arts Magazine. To create the magazine, Tina reached out to student artists, complied and designed the 142-page magazine. The proceeds Tina and her team earned from selling the magazines will be donated to charities to increase child literacy.
Beyond her jaw-dropping achievements, Tina is an amazing friend, business and crypto nerd, and, surprisingly, a fan of The Vampire Diaries and Wednesday on Netflix, which she watches on 2x speed (unsurprisingly). Tina loves the color jade green, Mongolian hotpot, poke bowls, and has a two-person book club with one of her friends. She’s a big fan of podcasts, and is known to frequent Ologies and Stanford’s The Future of Everything. Tina has taken basically all of the computer science courses SMES has to offer, though she also loved English III Honors, particularly the poetry unit focusing on Emily Dickinson. Tina felt that Ms. Bunch’s support and the class texts helped Tina grow as a writer, expanding and developing her writing talent, though I’m not sure how that’s possible :).
Tina, seeking to inspire and encourage, says that “you are never too young or incompetent to do anything,” so if you really, really want to make something happen, you can. Chase that goal, start that project, join that group. After all, a desire to do is the engine of motivation. “Don’t leave it up to chance,” advises Tina. She rephrases the cliche phrase: “shoot for the moon and at least you’ll land amongst the stars,” to, “goals have to be ambitious in order to be effective.” Beyond setting goals effectively and believing in yourself, Tina also emphasizes the importance of finding a support system that will be with you through the entirety of high school, whether it be your closest friends, your parents, teachers, or others. Tina also lives by the phrase “you are never as young as you are now,” meaning, in turn, you will never have as much time as you do now. So, those of you reading, experiment now. Find those passions that keep you up at night (literally) and fall in love with them so that your own future excites you. For those applying to college, your passions can become the story you tell to colleges, but beyond that, they become the story of you. You are the creative writer of your own story, so, ask: what is the story you want to write for yourself?
Thank you, Tina, for interviewing with the Margazine, you’re incredible! We know you’ll keep making waves at Stanford, and hope you enjoy the senior water balloon fight, as you “embrace the chaos” of starting the next chapter of your life.
Comments