We all love Disneyland, Malibu beaches, and endless sunshine. But what if I told you that same place is THE most wildfire-prone region in America? Welcome to none other than sunny Southern California, or the place I am proud to call home. My name is Bettina Lee, and growing up in Southern California meant that fire season was never some distant headline. It was a part of life.

For most of my childhood, fire season became a normality that I accepted. Smoke in the sky, ash on the car, everyone shrugging it off. Then the infamous Palisades Fire hit last year, and it stopped being something I observed in the background. It was all over the news, but for me it wasn’t a headline. It was my community, and the air I was breathing, and people I knew losing everything. Something in me just shifted and I remember thinking that I couldn’t keep watching this happen and doing nothing about it. And so, I’d like to credit the origin of my changemaker journey to this single event that reshaped how I viewed the world around me. 

Sophomore year began and I led a yearlong lung cancer service project through the L4C. I partnered with the American Lung Association (the largest lung health organization in America) and by the end of it, we earned the top grant of $9,300. I think that was the first time it hit me that a high schooler with a decent idea and enough stubbornness could actually move real resources toward a real problem. But honestly, the bigger realization was that I loved doing it. Not the award part, but the actual work itself. So I founded Project Pulmonary, an international 501(c)(3) public health nonprofit organization focused on lung cancer prevention in firefighters.

That same stretch of time was kind of chaotic in the best way. I wrote and published a children’s book about smoking cessation, and I co-developed an app called Lungitude+, which is a wildfire carcinogenic particulate tracking system with educational modules built in. It ended up winning the Congressional App Challenge, and at the conference in D.C., I got selected as one of five U.S. Capitol speakers out of over 400+ candidates. Standing there talking about the future of technology and STEM was surreal, because a year before that, I was just a high schooler ecstatic about getting a day off from school from the California wildfires.

Then I got into my top choice summer research program that summer, and it was my first real full-time research experience. I fell completely in love with the research community, so I decided junior year was going to be the year I locked in and tried to change the world through research too. Going in, I thought I’d be all about bioengineering and stem cell therapies, and while I do love those, I discovered I was really fascinated with biomaterials and sustainability. From there, I co-developed PuriFIRE, a regenerative VOC filter using a zeolite-TiO2 nanocomposite and photocatalysis, so instead of just trapping wildfire carcinogens it actively degrades them into less harmful byproducts. We designed it as an alternative to the SCBA gear firefighters carry now. PuriFIRE ended up winning at Regeneron ISEF, which people call the Olympics of Science, and it was through this competition that I found the people I call my closest friends to this day. I met so many people, and a lot of them turned out to be in the startup world. I got accepted to YC Startup School and went in late July, where I met some of the coolest people in tech. Now, I’m founding a startup with one of my friends from New Jersey, whom I met through the D.C. conference back in April.A lot more has happened since, but if I could only share one thing, it’d be this. People only ever post their wins. That’s what gets attention and that’s what feels worth sharing, so I get it. But behind every person you see winning is a mountain of failure. I’ve gotten more than 60+ rejections in the past two years alone and lost opportunities I really really wanted. It’s okay to not be perfect, and it’s okay to have those days where you’re just spiraling on yourself. What’s not okay is letting those thoughts sit there and chip away at your momentum. Everyone loves saying rejection is redirection, and sure, sometimes that is true. But a lot of the time, the rejection is just out of your control. The only part you actually control is what you do next.

The other thing I’d say is to stop chasing titles and start chasing impact. Nobody is going to remember what position you held in a club or what spot you played, but they’re going to remember what you actually did with it and how you changed what that role meant for whoever comes after you. Find weird, creative ways to stand out, and don’t be scared to put yourself out there for the stuff you actually care about.