Alec K. (IN A NUTSHELL)

I am taking time off from Stanford to pursue Curious Cardinals, chasing my dreams to not only help middle and high school students discover and pursue their passions, but also to provide college students with a platform to provide mentorship. After teaching my first workshop on the future of aviation to high school students at the start of the pandemic, I mobilized my most ambitious peers at Stanford and beyond to share topics they were passionate about to K-12 students. Since then, Curious Cardinals has featured on CNN and in Forbes highlighting our vision to create a community of lifelong learners and doers. After a year of bootstrapping the business to $600k+ of annual revenues, Curious Cardinals has now raised $6.8 million in seed funding and employs a team of 12, including experience designers, software engineers, marketers, and educators. I was recognized in the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 Education and Youngest category. Prior to starting Curious Cardinals, I was pursuing a major in Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Computer Science at Stanford University. In 2019, I graduated with a GPA in the top 1% at Harvard Westlake while juggling various extracurricular activities ranging from aviation to soccer. In my junior year of high school, I won an $8,000 grant to start Soles4Good, a social microenterprise that sources and provides shoes to Senegal’s street youth. I also received my pilot license in high school and served as captain of the Harvard-Westlake school varsity soccer team. At Stanford, I won awards from Nasa for a satellite I designed and worked for Stanford’s GPS Lab and Lockheed Martin as one of the only undergraduate researchers. When I am not working or speaking to Curious Cardinals students, mentors, or parents, I love watching soccer (Liverpool), running while listening to podcasts, reading, or spending time with friends!