Carson Huey-You is not your average 21-year-old. He is a 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 prodigy who is the youngest person to graduate from college in the state of Texas and among the youngest in the world. He graduated from Texas Christian University (TCU) on May 13, 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and with a minor in Mandarin Chinese and mathematics at the age of 14. He then earned his master’s degree in physics at age 17 in late 2019, and is currently a TCU graduate student seeking a Doctor of Philosophy focused on quantum physics.
Huey-You showed exceptional intelligence at a very young age. He was reading chapter books at age two and wanting to learn calculus by age three. His mother, Claretta Kimp, who studied early education and business at Southern Illinois University, homeschooled him until he was five years old. He and his younger brother, Cannan, attended and graduated from the Accommodated Learning Academy in Grapevine, Texas.
Huey-You scored a 1770 on the SAT national college entrance test and graduated from high school as co-valedictorian with a 4.0 GPA at age 10. During his time as an undergraduate student, Huey-You commuted between home and campus with his mother. He said he chose physics as his major because he wanted to understand how the universe works. “I’ve known since I was young that I wanted to do physics,” he said. “It started when I was watching ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ when I was home-schooled.”
Huey-You’s achievements have been featured in several media outlets, including Parade, where he met with Bill Nye and discussed the physics related to the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017. He also appeared as an advisor in two episodes of MythBusters Jr., where his brother Cannan starred as one of the young experimenters.
Huey-You is an inspiration for many young people, especially those who are interested in STEM fields. According to Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, African Americans represent only 6 percent of the STEM workforce. Huey-You hopes to contribute to the advancement of science and education through his research and teaching.
Outside academics, Huey-You enjoys playing the piano, Minecraft, chess, and swimming. He also has a dog named Klaus, named after the Nobel Prize winning German physicist Klaus von Klitzing.
Sibongile Sambo is a South African entrepreneur who turned her passion for flying into a successful business. She is the founder and managing director of SRS Aviation, the first black female owned aviation company in Africa.
Sambo was 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 in 1974 in Bushbuckridge, a rural area in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. She graduated from the University of Zululand with a degree in administration. She always dreamed of becoming a flight attendant, but she faced a major obstacle: she did not meet the minimum height requirement of 1.6 meters to work for South African Airways.
Instead of giving up on her dream, she decided to start her own aviation company. She sold her car and used her mother’s pension money to raise the initial capital of 500,000 rand (about $35,000). She also applied for a government tender to provide aviation services.
In 2004, she won the contract and launched SRS Aviation, named after her initials. The company offers a range of services, including helicopter flights, tourist transfers, VIP charters, cargo flights, medical evacuations and general air security. SRS Aviation has flown clients to destinations across the globe, such as the United States, Germany and Ghana.
