Only 20 inspiring individuals receive the Princess Diana Award annually, a prestigious recognition given to young people who make a positive social impact through humanitarian efforts and community work. Luckily, I had the privilege to talk to one of the recipients, Olivia Zhang. Olivia is a Harvard student who has used her platform to create the world’s largest youth-led pediatric cancer nonprofit, Cancer Kids First.
I wanted to reach out to Olivia to discuss her success at being chosen as one of the Princess Diana Award recipients, serving as the founder of the leading youth-led nonprofit dedicated to combating pediatric cancer, and as a current Harvard student. So, I did.
At the beginning of our interview, I asked Olivia what her organization, Cancer Kids First, does, to which she replied, “Cancer Kids First is the largest youth-lead non-profit aiding kids with pediatric cancer, and we primarily find search programs that revolve around normalizing the hospital environment, donating hospital resources, providing training for oncologists in low-income countries, delivering toys, books, and crafts!”
Additionally, I asked Olivia what inspired her to start Cancer Kids First, to which she readily replied, “Well, to start off, I was an artist, so I would sell homemade artwork to help fundraise for my grandfather’s chemotherapy treatment, and he lived in a very rural part of China, so treatment access and funding was kind of limited, and at that time I just wanted to do what I could to help him. Obviously, selling artwork for like $5 was not very beneficial, but in my mind it was a big impact.” Olivia continued to explain, “Eventually, I was at my elementary school, and my teacher would take care of me every day after school. She was diagnosed with breast cancer, and having both of those diagnoses at once was really hard. And then when they passed away, that was really the first time I lost two people I loved, and it was definitely hard to process and go through that. With that, I entered a very dark period in my life where I didn’t really know how to process these big emotions, but my loved ones helped me realize how important it is to respond to these types of situations. My grandfather was also a teacher, and both of them had this philosophy of putting their students first, so I wanted to honor their legacies. So, yeah, that is essentially where the idea of Cancer Kids First was created.”
From there, I asked Olivia what her inspiration was for starting her social media platforms, as she has accumulated over 100,000 followers and 8.6 million likes on TikTok, to which Olivia replied, “I wanted to find a way where I could get the word out for youth-led non-profits, specifically where I could meet as many people as possible, and I thought creating a social media platform would be the easiest way to reach the most amount of people in a short amount of time, and so that is sort of what spurred me for creating videos on my social media accounts. However, I also do love Emma Chamberlain and Alix Earle, and I love how they just film parts of their life, so that was definitely a minor part as to why I wanted to start on social media as well.”
Segueing to my next question, I asked Olivia what it felt like to receive over 20 million views on her acceptance to Harvard, but also what advice she had for students who want to reach for the stars just like her. She replied, “Okay, to be honest, regarding Harvard, I feel like that is the school where every student should try to apply if they have the opportunity to because it really is so iconic! I mean, if you are going through the process, why not just try and apply. You never know! For that reason, I really did not think I would get in because it’s literally Harvard, haha! So, when it happened, I was not very good at processing things at the moment, but I started crying because it was very special, but I didn’t think it was real until about two weeks later when I posted my commitment and all of my friends were sending me merch and started congratulating me. I feel like that was when I finally realized that I actually got accepted!” Continuing, Olivia expressed, “In terms of advice for people, I feel like when I was applying to schools, I kept on comparing myself to other students in my high school, and I would try to join clubs because I saw other students doing them, not because I actually enjoyed them, so with that, many top-tier universities really look for students with a spike in their application, so I would say find your passions, find your strengths, and really hone that!”
I then asked Olivia what her biggest source of motivation is that prevents her from burnout, to which she replied, “Oh my gosh, I actually love talking about this because I have a folder in my camera roll. It’s called ‘Words’, and basically I screenshot texts, emails, DMs, whatever I get from patients, kids, parents, volunteers from Cancer Kids First, people who watch my TikToks, my teachers, etc., and I go ahead and read about how my work has impacted or inspired them, and reading through those messages really does fuel my motivation. It’s so simple! All I do is screenshot messages and add them to that folder, haha! I really hope other people start doing this!”
With all of Olivia’s success, I wanted to know who she considered to be her role model. With a lot of thought, Olivia responded, “Well, I have like three. The first one is my mom. I know it seems cheesy, but it really is my mom. She grew up with older siblings who were prioritized growing up, so she didn’t always get a lot of opportunities and resources. However, she was actually the first person in her family to go to college and come to the US to work, and her journey is really inspiring to me as she has always been there for me.” Continuing, Olivia expressed, “The second person I would say is my high school Principal. She and I got so close, and she has been an immense mentor and source of support. In times of gender discrimination, because I worked in a club with all guys, she would just sit me down and give me advice, she would help me prepare for interviews, she wrote my rec letter, and she just gave me a lot of advice on how to be a better leader. I really cannot thank her enough! Lastly, my third person would be someone who I have looked up to for a long time. Her name is Sophia Kianni. She is a climate activist who went to Stanford, but she grew up in my area and I got to see her grow her non-profit work, and she was the first big, youth-lead non-profit leader that I saw, so she really pushed the work I do with Cancer Kids First. In general, she is just an inspiration because I want to improve my public speaking skills at the pace that she’s at, and she has been able to create a lot of change in the field that she’s in.”
Moving toward Olivia’s accomplishments, I wanted to ask her how it felt to be awarded the Princess Diana Award by Prince William himself. With nothing short of pride, Olivia responded, “The same thing with college decisions. I was just so bad at processing it. I didn’t feel much because I didn’t think it was real, and then it hit me a few weeks later and I just freaked out and called my mom of course! Attending the actual ceremony was amazing. It was so much better than I imagined because meeting change-makers and listening to their stories from Nigeria, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands was so inspiring. I mean, also, meeting Prince William was insane! They actually had a training for us to teach us essentially how to talk to him and address the media. Immediately, when I walked on the stage to meet him, I completely forgot everything I was taught to do, which was incredibly surreal! To this day, it still doesn’t feel real to me.”
I also asked Olivia how she was nominated for this award, to which she replied, “Basically, the ceremony I attended was for the legacy of the Diana Award, which is a little bit confusing, but they have two different subsets of winners. So they have the Diana Award people who are picked from around 1,200 nominations across the world and they pick maybe 100 or less, and then from all of those winners, they pick annual Diana Award winners, which is about 20 people that they bring to London. So I was nominated for the Diana Award, and that was kind of the application process, but the legacy one, they review your Diana Award application again and then they pick like 20 people from that.”
Concluding our interview, I asked Olivia what advice she would give to her high school self if she could go back in time. With lots of thought, Olivia replied, “I really believe everything happens for a reason, and I really do believe that everything that happened in the past happened because you really needed to go through it. Also, I wish I could have believed in myself more in the beginning. I wish I could have seen my future self now and seen how much potential I had.”
With the conclusion of our conversation, I would like to personally thank Olivia Zhang for giving me the incredible opportunity to interview her. Her motives and actions are nothing short of admirable, and her mission to do good in this world is incredibly poignant. Thank you for inspiring the future generation of change-makers! You are an inspiration to all. Thank you for leading the way for hope. Keep spreading your goodness!
