Hello there! My name is Laarni Aguila. My family and I immigrated from the Philippines to Washington in 2008 to be able to have educational opportunities that were not available to us in our home country. I grew up in a low-income household, making the idea of going to college a financially daunting task. As a student, I worked a couple of part-time jobs to lessen the financial burden while managing the rigorous amount of work a STEM-major has to undergo. On June 8th of 2019, I saw the fruit of my family’s labor as I graduated from Seattle Pacific University with a Bachelors in Cellular and Molecular Biology. I now currently work as a Research Scientist in an infectious disease lab at Harborview Medical Center. I plan on applying to a PhD program in Microbiology in a few years as I have grown to love this field of research. I am ecstatic to be a mentor, or simply just as someone in your life, to help navigate through college. It is a challenging journey that doesn’t need to be taken alone.