Sania Chandrani finds words blissful. Her bookshelf is cluttered with tattered journals filled with poetic ramblings and drawings/doodles, well-loved books by authors Marcus Zusak and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others, and bags of half-full art supplies.

You can tell that a school paper belongs to her if a) it’s covered in doodles, b) it’s as long as it’s allowed to be, and c) it’s written with her favorite utensil—a mechanical pencil.

Outside of school, she maintains a blog, writes for VOX Teen Communications in metro Atlanta, and hangs out with her great-grandmother.

When Sania has a moment, she tries to be alone—running (rather slowly), doing something wordy or picture-y (rather often), thinking (rather deeply), or tinkering with scraps of fabric (rather messily). When she has longer than a moment, she loves to volunteer wherever she can make people smile, read (which will inevitably last longer than it was planned to), and travel. With 10 countries and 4 languages under her belt, Sania hopes to work internationally in development, business, and journalism.

Sania believes that people are people, and people, at their core, are good. That’s why she’s working on starting her own non-profit organization, A Heart for a Heart. In keeping with this belief, her favorite quote is “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff" (Carl Sagan).