The Women's Sports Foundation has empowered so many young girls and women across the U.S. I benefitted from WSF with a travel and training grant when I was 12 years old. It really helped my family financially.

As a kid, falling was embarrassing. As I got older, I got used to falling and picking myself back up. There's not a sense of failure. It's of disappointment. You train so hard to not make mistakes. When you do, you're learning from that. How do I improve? How do I get better for the next time? Through every failure, there's something to be learned.

I was improving in the sport at age 10, 11, when I was getting my triple jumps - and it was suddenly very isolating. I was doing really well in competitions, and it felt strange because people that were my friends became almost jealous.

If you ask another competitor, they may tell you they felt very competitive towards me. But I can tell you that my biggest competition was myself. There's only so much you can do, right? There is only so much energy that one has. My focus was on how do I get the best out of myself.

Nothing is a career move. Everything I've done this year has so not been a career move.

As an entrepreneur and mother, I support the need to put women at the center, recognizing their crucial impact on social development and their important role of balancing family and professional responsibilities.

I don't live out my career, I live my life.

Our State Senate must lead by example, restore trust and transparency, stop sweeping workplace misconduct under the rug, and do everything we can to protect women who work in and around the Capitol.