Tiffany Talavera-Romero, a 17-year-old Latina from Chicago, Illinois, currently attends Proviso Mathematics and Science Academy, a STEM high school in Forest Park, in hopes to pursue a career in Mechanical Engineering in the future. Tiffany attended a Mechanical Engineering Summer Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) that inspired her to go further with the profession than she already has, and she is currently working on applying for an Engineering Program at MIT. When Tiffany isn’t wearing her sash and crown, she works extremely hard inside and outside of school to maintain high A’s in all her classes. For her great academic achievements, she has received multiple awards recognizing her for her performance in school and has been accepted into multiple National Honor clubs that base themselves on community service in different areas. Given the amount of time Tiffany spends around her school and its environment, she decided to develop her social platform, Get Up and Grind, based on her experiences within the school. 

Get Up and Grind is a social platform Tiffany developed to motivate students in her school and in other schools to involve themselves in extracurricular activities to help improve their school’s environment. Tiffany was inspired to create this social platform because although she takes pride in the school she attends, she does admit that there is room for improvement to make the school an engaging and exciting place for the students and staff in the school. A great portion of schools are academics, but it is important to not ignore the social aspect of the school because it is what makes schools exciting. This is where Get Up and Grind makes its mark by inspiring students to involve themselves in extracurricular activities and clubs that will benefit the school’s environment, and overall, benefit their school experience in the long run by making it fun for themselves and others. Tiffany follows the Get Up and Grind model regularly by offering her spare time to stay after school and make improvements within the school through different clubs like NHS, WLNHS, Student Council, Class of ‘27, and more.  

Outside of her achievements and community service, Tiffany centers her life around having fun. Tiffany loves performing arts. She grew up dancing ballet, tap, and jazz, and she did other activities like tumbling, choir, and she took art classes at the same local company—Maywood Fine Arts. Besides professional dancing, Tiffany loves Latin cultural dances like traditional folkloric dancing which she also did at a young age, and many different types of dances in Hispanic culture like Cumbias that are typically party-style dances. Tiffany loves going to concerts, and she has an extremely diverse music taste. Music is key for dancing, and they both go hand and hand. She believes that music and dance are key to forming connections and having a fun time with strangers, friends, and most importantly, family.  

With this, Tiffany Talavera-Romero is very excited to be the new USOA Teen Illinois, and she is prepared to Inspire, Uplift, and Empower everyone around her.