MATE alumni often share that they loved the program in part because of all the cool places they got to travel to for competitions. For Clara Orndorff, she visited somewhere a little more exclusive: the White House Science Fair.

Ironically enough, her journey with MATE started from trying to avoid a science fair. In seventh grade, her school allowed students to skip mandatory participation in the science fair if they took a grant from MATE for supplies and formed a team. She, her younger brother, and a friend of theirs formed a three-person team. A few years later, they were hauling a 400-gallon livestock watering tank across the White House lawn so they could do a live demo of their ROV for President Barack Obama and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

With just a three-person team, Clara got involved at every stage of the process that it takes to perform well at MATE. Her small but mighty team took home first place in the ranger class in the 2015 world championship and earned third in explorers in 2016.

She took all that hands-on experience to the University of Washington to study mechanical engineering. Thanks to all that she already knew, she ended up only having to take one computer aided drafting class during undergrad. Now, she lives in Seattle and works in the medical device industry designing products that help people—and she says the process is very similar to MATE.

“My job is sitting down and asking, ‘How can we address these challenges? What the requirements we need to meet?’” Clara said. 

She was able to hit the ground running too, since she already had experience with the design programs she needed to use at her job.

“Just having the opportunity to get hands-on and actually design and build something cannot be underestimated,” she said. “Don’t take it for granted that everyone is able to do this or have this experience. … It means so much.”