VICKY KAO

Vicky Kao is a 17-year-old Taiwanese girl who is avid in social studies, with an empathetic, open-minded personality and a sense of justice towards social issues. 

Vicky’s parents have always been open-minded and progressive, and raise Vicky with the same mindset. They wanted Vicky to learn from experience, and want her to explore the world with her own perspective. Thus, in Vicky’s childhood, her life is filled with a variety of fun activities, such as ballet dancing, piano, violin, rhythmic gymnastics, and more. Moreover, Vicky likes to explore the world with books, from adventure novels to encyclopedias, immersing herself in the world of knowledge. Her parents also took her to various social justice-related events, such as the Pride Parade, Anti-Nuke protests, and women’s rights NGO banquets. As a child, Vicky was immersed in a progressive value, therefore she grew up with the key value of inclusion and a sense of justice. Eventually, in middle school, after taking history and geography classes, she found her passion in social studies.

To deepen her understanding of my interest in social studies, Vicky joined her school’s Geography Olympiad team to attend competitions with her teammates. And for the competition in 2022, they interviewed and did research on an Amis community, which is the community of a tribe of Taiwanese Indigenous people, in Taipei. And they wrote papers on the urban indigenous people and their housing rights to help raise awareness. Other than indigenous people’s rights, Vicky also expresses her care for gender equality by starting an Instagram page to spread awareness on a diversity of gender topics, such as online misogyny and gender discrimination in sports. She is also dedicated to doing workshops on gender equality and other topics that are important to teenage girls in a local church with her friends. 

Vicky plans to major in sociology or gender studies at Georgetown University or another world-class university. After getting the bachelor's degree, she is planning to get a degree in law school, to pursue a career in law.