Tatsiana Sokalava

“Always strive to be better. Perseverance and grit are the most important things to have in life because you can get through anything with it.”

(Excerpt from an interview with Arman Hunanyan, Co-Founder, Career Scoops. 15 year old high schooler in business with his mother)
Florida, USA

My mom, Tatsiana, is a very hardworking person. My entire life, I’ve seen her working, pursuing, or learning something new. She has gone back to school to get her Masters, take other classes, now she's a co-founder with me on Career Scoops. My mom has an interesting professional and educational background. She's a data scientist, she got her Master's in business, and her undergraduate was in radio engineering. I’m very inspired by her.

My mom is also very smart. I can talk to her and ask her about things and she'll know the answers because of her experiences and knowledge. She definitely is someone who knows a lot about the world. I'm grateful to have someone like that because I have a mom who is always up to something, someone who has a variety of backgrounds and experiences to draw from, and always driven to learn and expand herself.

When we are promoting Career Scoops, I see my mom talking to many people, more so than me because I'm kind of introverted. Mom says she's also introverted but I see that all goes away when she's passionate about something. And it's inspiring to see that because I am encouraged to talk and bring my idea out there too. It's just really very cool to see her being so supportive of my idea, and now we are working together. A lot of our ideas come from our daily conversations, so that could be during our car rides or at the dinner table, but we also have meetings. It just makes me happy I get to do this with her.

The vision for Career Scoops started from a class in school where we discuss real world problems and what we can do to help solve them. And looking at a problem that I have is about picking a career I want to pursue. My parents started this conversation with me early, encouraging me to discover what I wanted to do at a young age. And I realized that as I was entering my high school years and I didn't have a clue about what I wanted to do. I asked my friends and they had the same concerns. As I further explored, I learned some people did figure out what they wanted to do, they go to college and end up switching majors or ending up in a job that they don't like and switching careers when they're like 30 years old. So I came up with the idea of Career Scoops to help everyone, including myself. And in partnership with my mom, Career Scoops is now a platform dedicated to helping the young generation find their dream careers using the power of AI technology and community support.

When I am down or have problems with something in school, or even when COVID hit and so much changed, my mom would always tell me, “Always strive to be better. Perseverance and grit are the most important things to have in life because you can get through anything with it.” This is so true and where I’ve applied this so far is in my academics. I aim for straight A's. That's just my goal. And I take honors and AP classes, so it can be tough for some people but I do always strive to be better. However, there are many moments where I struggled to stay disciplined. Then I think of my mom, her advice, and how she demonstrates these traits. On top of her other duties at home and work, I saw her study hard for tests. With mom’s example and advice about being better and having perseverance and grit, I shifted from procrastinating/lazy to becoming a hard working student. I am very happy about that.

Career Scoops is probably my biggest accomplishment right now where I’ve also applied perseverance and grit. Not many freshmen in high school start a business or have a startup, and it took something for me to get out of my comfort zone to start sharing it with my friends, get out of my shell. In these past months, it took perseverance for my mom and I to generate community support, pushing the cause forward to help the high school and young adult community with what they want to do in life. A 15 year old high schooler wouldn’t have been able to accomplish this without the mentorship and support of my mother.

Thank you, Mom.