Lucy Guo is one of those girls who is going to change the world. When she’s not bubbling around Hunt Library, splitting Skibo breadsticks with her sorority sisters or trying to beat 2048, she’s tucked behind her keyboard, programming (or Twitter stalking, but she’s supposed to be programming).
Lucy, a sophomore, learned to code in the second grade, launched her first website by fifth grade, and during the tenth grade, became the CEO of five-figure online business. After graduating high school and beginning her Computer Science degree here at CMU, Lucy lunged into the coding world and since has won several hackathons, worked for the San Francisco start-up Endless Mobile and this summer, will return to California to intern at Facebook.
As a Facebook intern, Lucy will be working to improve iOS Messenger, coding and adding new features to make the app the best thing since SMS texting. While she’s excited to hone her iOS skills, she’s looking forward to meeting awesome people and networking with the best in the business. “And the free food,” Lucy adds. “Maybe mostly the free food.”
Facebook isn’t the only big name added to Lucy’s resume this year; she has also tacked on “Thiel Fellowship Finalist.” The fellowship, created by PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, awards $100,000 dollars to twenty under-twenty year olds as well as connections, direction and resources for them to drop out of school and pursue individual projects. Lucy is one of the forty finalists given the opportunity to fly to San Francisco last month and pitch her venture. Lucy’s project aims to redesign education and accomplish what all of us have been striving for since middle school—make studying fun. She has developed educational game apps fit for any curriculum for any grade. Imagine playing Jeopardy to learn geometry. By making learning interactive, she aims to promote education and tailor it to the digital lifestyle of today’s students. Even though she had to miss this year’s carnival to pitch her idea, it was worth it to meet her talented peers from across the country, and connect with today’s top entrepreneurs. Lucy finds out if she has received the fellowship in June, but until then, she’s keeping her fingers crossed.