As a child, my creativity knew no bounds. Friends and family could always find me with a pencil in one hand and paper in the other. Art was natural for me and it was considered my talent by everyone around me. My parents saw that potential and always encouraged and pushed me to foster my craft. However there was a lingering concern of how I would apply my skills when entering college and the professional world. My father introduced me to video games when I entered high school and his insistence in my involvement with them led me to where I am today. Video games can provide an incredibly interactive and engrossing story that, coupled with equally breathtaking graphics, created an overall experience that is unmatched by any other form of media. The game development field offers individuals of any skillset the opportunity to collaborate on challenging and innovative projects. In the game design field, I realized that my skills could be applied in a number of different ways. My decision to apply to schools that would enhance my skillset for my desired career led me to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia which had the best program for my development.

After being accepted into SCAD, I registered as an Interactive Design and Game Development major with a concentration in Game Development. The game development program maintains a rigorous and challenging curriculum that pushes each student to collaborate and solve problems that falls outside of standard college homework on a daily basis. SCAD offered some of the best educators in the game development field to inspire us every single day and to encourage us to be the best we can be. SCAD's mission statement states that they “exists to prepare talented students for professional careers, emphasizing learning through individual attention in a positively oriented university environment,” and each professor that I have interacted with on a personal level have only encouraged me to succeed. It didn’t take long to realize that everything there was to love and know about the process and the effort that goes into the creation of video games was at my fingertips. I have engaged in courses such as programming, basic game design, digital design aesthetics, and others related specifically to game development. Each of these classes have provided me with unique skills and challenged me to problem solve under pressure and within strict deadlines. During college career, I honed into my focus for my career within the game development field. My passion for well-developed stories along with my skillset in visual media led me to focus in the visual development side of game development. During my personal time, my energy was put into independently developing my visual portfolio that properly represented my career goals. The game development program hosts several events that are meant to provide opportunities for students to work together and to gain exposure and experience for their resumes. During the 2015/2016 school year, I participated on a team for Global Game Jam, a worldwide competition in which small game development teams make a game based off of a prompt in a 48-hour timespan. I was also a finalist in the SCAD Entelechy Juried Competition, in which Interactive Design and Game Development majors submit their work that would be judged and later displayed in the Entelechy Exhibit.

During my junior year of college, I applied to the Research Experience for Undergraduates for Ocean, Marine, and Polar Science program (REU OMPS). I was a researcher on the Pasquotank Water Quality team and my involvement in the program included aiding other team members in the collection and analysis of data from the Pasquotank River. My role also included digital photographic documentation of the research and other events that happened during the program. The program allowed me to further my skillset in terms of programming. My skills were also further developed in terms of research, especially research involving Science Technology Engineering and Mathematic (STEM) related fields. I had been previously involved with a STEM related program akin to REU OMPS, in middle school when I participated in the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) at Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) under Dr. Linda Hayden.  CReSIS gave me a firm foundation when it came to STEM fields and introduced me to more effective research skills that helped me later on in my studies. During my senior year of College, I reapplied to the REU OMPS program again. I was assigned to the PiMERS (Pathways in Mathematics Education and Remote Sensing) Outreach team and had to facilitate two separate outreach program. The first program was the PiMERS Middle School program which offered opportunities involving Mathematics and Robotics to minority middle school research students, through the PiMERS program, in order to foster and continue interest in related STEM fields. During this two-week program, the Outreach team supervised the students and led them in sessions involving Mathematics and robotic engineering using Lego Mindstorms. The second program, the PiMERS Senior Computer Training Camp at Zion Baptist Church, ran for five weeks and my role was to create and facilitate sessions intended for training senior citizens in basic computer and internet skills. My acceptance into the REU program at ECSU pushed me to work outside of my comfort zone. We focused on skills that would later give us an advantage when applying for jobs in any field of our choosing. What we learned in this program are skills that can be taken back and apply to the rest of my time at SCAD as well as later on in my professional career. My involvement with the seniors and the middle school students specifically reminded me of my purpose for pursuing my major.
The game development industry is constantly making strides in technology. The development of virtual reality and now the more recent work done with augmented reality have been mainly done by game companies. There have been active, successful efforts in create the next generation of game that interacts with the player’s surroundings and that technology can be further developed and manipulated to solve problems outside of games. The technology used in gaming can be used to make some aspects of life more accessible for individuals with individualized needs, whether it be disability or old age. All of these advancements can help to better the quality of life for many people. Video games are accessible to every age group and have the potential to engage many people from different backgrounds. However there are still issues in the game development industry that need to be addressed- the lack of representation of women and black and brown people in the industry. My goal is to work in the industry and create content that features people of color and women in a way that relates to the consumer base the games are about. My aspiration is to create games that make young brown and black girls look at what I do and be encouraged to do anything they put their minds to because they saw me doing what I do. In my opinion, it is of the upmost importance to encourage younger minority individuals to believe in themselves earlier on in life, so that they can succeed without doubt in themselves later on.