Claire Kim
A Beacon of Excellence
By MARK SHARKEY
I wish to highlight and showcase the incredible talents and accomplishments of a Langley softball player, Claire Kim. Claire is an exceptional ambassador for Langley High School and its softball program, as shown in her many school achievements and activities outside the classroom. Claire will be attending Cornell University in the fall, majoring in Mechanical Engineering/Robotics with a minor in East Asian Studies.
Claire, a senior at Langley, is one of the top students in the 2024 class. During her four years at Langley, she has challenged herself with an extremely rigorous academic path: many AP courses in a broad spectrum of subjects, advanced math, and science courses, in addition to completing the Japanese 5 course work, which includes being nominated for the Japanese Governor’s School. Through this arduous work, Claire has achieved an extremely high GPA and scored extremely high in the SAT tests. She participates in the National Honor Society as well as the National English, Math, Science, Japanese, and Music Honor Societies.
In addition to her schoolwork, she is involved at Langley in many ways. From a musical perspective, Claire has been a four-year member of the orchestra, is the first chair cellist, and has the opportunity to perform at Carnegie Hall. Claire is captain of the Langley HS Science Olympiad team. She has led this team to win numerous awards and medals. The Science Olympiad team is one of only two schools from Virginia invited to the SO Nationals, finishing in the top 5 nationally. Athletically, she is a four-year member of the Langley Softball team, attending daily practice, traveling to the annual Myrtle Beach Spring Break Tournament, and being an important member of the team. She will be on the Athletic Honor Roll for four years.
One would think that this course load and school involvement would be enough, but it is what she does outside the classroom that is so impressive.
- Claire is the founder of the Little Stem Initiative. Claire’s interest in STEM prompted her to lead a Girls in STEM seminar and workshop, bringing nine professional women in a range of STEM fields and local middle school-aged girls together to create connections and a vision for future women in STEM. She has shared this workshop, translated and subtitled, with a contact in Japan, using her Japanese language and interpersonal skills to bridge two cultures. She also leads a team of high school and college students around the world to create mentorship relationships with young people who desire to make an impact in their own communities.
- President and Executive Director of the Global Impact Council, which strives to empower teens to change the world.
- Coordinator for the Youth Steam Outreach program designed to package and deliver STEAM experiments to children in long-term hospitals and shelters.
- Private tutor for elementary through high school students in chemistry and Japanese
- In the summer of 2023, Claire was an Engineering Technician Student Trainee at the US Naval Research Laboratory. She assisted in developing a prototype (flat-sat) for a CubeSat-based radio frequency (RF) payload as part of the Naval Center for Space Technology’s (NCST) RF group. In addition, she conducted independent research on RF payloads, TT&C Radio Lead; and orbit modeling leads.
- She attended a 3-week robotics program at UPenn (ESAP), where she was thrown into an intensive program where they had a crash course in the basics of robotics and had to write code and build hardware that could play a song on a recorder.
Outside of these high-intensity and time-consuming activities, Claire still has time to volunteer as a softball coach at High School Softball Camps and Great Falls Little League coaching clinics, work as a summer lifeguard, and achieve the Girl Scout Gold Medal Award.
As you can see, Claire is a courageous, loyal, and fiercely determined young woman who has a bright future.
