A sharp click sound resonates through an empty courtyard as blue heels hit the cold pavement. Dressed to the nines, senior Maddie Cox leads a group of robotics students to the Computer-Aided Design (or CAD) lab. Cox entered high school hoping to be the next Coco Chanel, but now holds dreams of being the next Tony Stark.

Freshman year, Cox was more than prepared to start her journey to a career as a successful fashion designer and showing at Paris Fashion Week. Looking for a challenge, Cox opted to take Computer Science as her elective. She quickly found that while her mastery with Microsoft Office would not carry over here, she had a knack for computer programming In 2013, the robotics team was just beginning to form. The leaders visited the different Comp Sci I classes, and Cox decided, on a whim, to join the team.

Flash forward four years, four regional competitions, two trips to the World Championship, two paid software development internships and a Dean’s List Finalist award later, Cox still walks the halls in her sparkly stilettos- now donning a Stark Industries jacket. Cox combined her love of the arts and technology by becoming an advocate for the transition from STEM to STEAM in education, adding the “A” for arts. That shift is the focus of her AP Capstone Research paper that studies how often times the greatest minds of our time came from artistic backgrounds.

She will be attending Trinity University and hopes to make her way to a successful career as a woman in programing. She is absolutely positive that her other loves of art, French and fashion will merge splendidly in whatever field she ends up pursuing and allow her to “build a better tomorrow, today.”