Manaal Ali

High School Graduation Year: 2016
Year First Awarded the Carson Scholarship, School: 2015, Harrisburg High School
Sponsored by: Carson Scholars Fund

Manaal is most proud of having written a young adult novel at the age of 16 which is set to be published in winter of 2016.  She currently attends Augustana University and is involved with a variety of activities. She has volunteered at LifeScape, a home for intellectually and developmentally disabled children, where she mentors young residents. Manaal has also run the Life Science Discovery Program at Washington Pavilion, taught animal dissections, mentored a robot engineering class which scored second in the state, and started two nationwide nonprofits: Starts with Soap and Civic Duty. She was selected as a PROMISE Scholar at Sanford Research, where she works with molecular biology researchers. Manaal will continue to work at Sanford Research throughout the next four years of college making her the youngest long-term researcher in the facility.

Manaal would empower her ten-year-old self by telling her that she is “smart enough to compete among the smartest, strong enough to fight beside the strongest, and important enough to be remembered by many.”