I grew up in a high-crime area in suburban Baltimore. Violence, drugs, and alcoholism were rampant — a fertile recruiting ground for street gangs.

When Cristin Haase was first thinking about a career in dental health, the inequality in care available to American Indians was on her mind — she wanted to be one of the few Indigenous professionals working on closing that gap.

Mason Grimshaw never envisioned himself walking across the stage at his college graduation. Now, having recently received his bachelor’s degree in business analytics and poised to start a master’s program in the same field, he can’t imagine himself anywhere else. And it all started with a game of cards.

At 15, Caleb Dunlap thought he wanted to become a doctor, but admits his grades could have been better. His parents divorced and often, he says, there wasn’t a lot of extra money for the family of five kids living in northern Minnesota. “I’m Ojibwe from Nagaajiwanaang, the Fond du Lac Reservation 30 miles from Chi-gami [the name his people call Lake Superior],” he says.

As a 12th-grader at Menlo-Atherton High School in Northern California, Anna Quinlan is a little preoccupied. What senior isn’t? But here’s the thing: It’s all about science — heady stuff like helping people manage Type 1 and 2 diabetes through her very own invention, a low-cost, closed-loop insulin pump. She calls it an “artificial pancreas,” a breakthrough that won her the Grand Award in the 2018 National American Indian Virtual Science and Engineering Fair (NAIVSEF) sponsored by AISES.

Learning how to smoothly transition from learning in a classroom to navigating a workplace can be tricky. At her internship with Boston Scientific, University of Oklahoma student Alexis Keeling learned how to be a working engineer. Besides picking up a lot of company-specific procedures and tools, she was able to see how what she has learned in school applies to real-life manufacturing. Keeling, Cherokee, says that as an intern you are expected to do true project work that applies to your education, as well as learn how a company functions, outside a textbook.

Like many other Native students, Kenny Swift Bird was motivated to go to college. He had some great teachers at the high school in his small Nebraska hometown of Chadron, less than an hour’s drive from his Oglala Lakota Tribe’s Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. When he took statistics, calculus, and chemistry, his teachers helped him discover both his aptitude for STEM and how much he enjoys it.

Growing up surrounded by his family and immersed in culture provided a firm foundation for Jeffrey Davis. “My driving factor is words of wisdom from my grandparents William ‘Buster’ Davis and Martha Davis,” says Davis, Tlingit. “They told me early on that I should always do any job to the best of my ability because my success and hard work are a reflection of me, my family, my community, and my culture.”

Elsie DuBray turns 18 on the Fourth of July. She’s headed for Stanford University after graduating last spring from Timber Lake High School in Timber Lake, S.D., where she sang in the choir, played flute in the band, participated in the One-Act Play and Oral Interpretation programs, served as student council president, played volleyball, and volunteered with the Cheyenne River Youth Project. 

Adonis Martinez spent his childhood at the foot of the Black Hills in Rapid City, S.D. He was raised by his grandparents and great-grandparents in a family that has emphasized education for generations. His great-grandmother and grandmother both attended college, encouraged by their families. Growing up, Martinez was told, “You either go to school or you work. There is no in-between.”