The power of persistence

Photo by Adam Atkinson

By Stella Katsipoutis-Varkanis

As a child, Angela Busheska ’25 didn’t use a clock to tell time. When she woke up in the mornings, she calculated the hour based on the angle at which the sunlight seeped through her blinds. From the dawn of her days, Busheska knew she had an affinity for math, prompting her to pursue the subject as early as elementary school. 

At the time, being mathematically inclined singled her out from her peers: “I was born and raised in a small village in Macedonia, where you don’t see a lot of people—especially women—studying STEM,” Busheska says. “I was bullied for the first nine years of school because I wasn’t abiding by the system.” Nevertheless, she persisted—particularly at the encouragement of a sixth grade teacher, who challenged her with advanced learning material and signed her up for math competitions. Now in 2024, the electrical engineering and computer science student’s lengthy list of achievements as an innovator, social entrepreneur, and motivational speaker have earned her recognition as one of Glamour magazine’s College Women of the Year. 

The journey wasn’t always an easy one: Coming from a low-income family, Busheska couldn’t afford a tutor when she came up against challenging moments in her studies: “At times I felt like giving up,” she says. “But I realized it’s all about failing—and learning from those failures. I had to be creative and work my way through.” Busheska plunged deeper and deeper into her schoolwork, dedicating most of her days to practicing math problems and refining her skills. 

Her perseverance paid off: Busheska qualified for math regionals in eighth grade and reached nationals by ninth. She earned a full scholarship to a private high school soon after, where she went on to win the math and physics Olympiads at both the regional and national levels. By the end of her high school career, she had several more victories under her belt at the European level, and made the first Macedonian team to qualify for the International Young Physicists Tournament. 

In addition to STEM, Busheska had another passion: environmentalism, which was sparked by her participation in events like the GENIUS Olympiad science fair competition in the U.S. as a high school freshman, where she presented her research on environment-friendly cities. The unexpected death of her aunt in her junior year further fueled her desire to fuse her interests in ways that would benefit the greater good. “My home city is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and I saw the devastating effects firsthand when I lost my aunt to complications resulting from the toxic air,” she says. During a gap year after high school, she even learned how to code and launched the nonprofit app EnRoute in 2020 to spread the word about the impact of fast fashion on the environment. “Using my skills in STEM to help the fight against climate change became my life’s goal,” Busheska says.

A full-ride scholarship brought Busheska to Lafayette in 2021, where she became the first woman in the last 30 years to take on a dual major in electrical engineering and computer science at the College. She’s since continued forging her own path as a woman in STEM, led by her vision of leveraging technology as “a tool to help solve some of the world’s greatest problems.” 

Over her time on College Hill, Busheska has held internships at Google and Microsoft, where she worked on improving accessibility in various software programs. She delivered keynote speeches at events like the Google Developers Conference and Bloomberg Green Festival to demonstrate how tech can be used for social good. In 2022, she made it to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. As a junior, Busheska was named a Neo Scholar—the first in Lafayette’s history—joining one of the strongest communities of tech leaders in the nation. She also attended an Oscars event this past spring to speak with Hollywood stars about using their platforms to raise awareness of climate change. 

Photo by Adam Atkinson

Busheska says she’s grateful for Lafayette’s intimate campus environment—yet close proximity to large cities like New York and Philadelphia—which provided her the wealth of opportunities that helped her get this far. “Being a student at a small college allows you to have great support from so many people, whether it’s professors, fellow students, or alumni,” she says. “I developed a close relationship with my professors, from whom I benefited a lot, and got involved in so many different projects that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I had gone to a bigger school.” 

As a student-researcher at Lafayette, Busheska took every chance she could to immerse herself in laboratory work. With Christian Lopez, assistant professor of computer science, she helped develop an adaptive virtual reality application designed to improve students’ spatial visualization skills. Alongside Yih-Choung Yu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, she helped design a wheelchair controlled by a brain-computer interface. In the lab of Nara Almeida, former visiting professor of civil and environmental engineering, she examined sustainable buildings and architectural practices, a study that was published when Busheska was a junior. She also partnered with Christopher Ruebeck, associate professor of economics, and the Nature Nurture Center to activate Easton’s new Climate Action Plan in 2022.  

“I learned from my research experiences the most, but also through my classes,” Busheska says. Faculty like Jeffrey Pfaffman, associate professor of computer science; Sally Sajadian, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Justin Corvino, professor of mathematics, she explains, were instrumental in facilitating her pursuit of her dual degree and mathematics minor. Through her learnings, she was able to expand the scope of her EnRoute app, and use it as a tool to work with nonprofit organizations in more than 55 countries around the world to reduce their carbon footprint and mobilize efforts in the fight against greenwashing. Busheska also studied abroad in Portugal, where she expanded her knowledge of smart cities, and honed her public speaking skills both inside the classroom and as a participant in the Dyer Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Big Idea Competition.

Busheska hopes that her work and her story will inspire and continue opening doors for younger generations of women interested in pursuing careers in STEM. “Empowering women to join the field is crucial for the world,” she says. “As new technologies and things like AI continue to be developed, and as we face growing worldwide issues like climate change, we need women to be represented—not just on the front lines of innovation, but also in policy decision-making.”

Looking forward, Busheska is exploring the possibility of attending graduate school. She hopes to eventually follow a profession that allows her to work alongside communities to solve issues at the intersection of environment, sustainable technology, AI, and policy development—and make those solutions accessible to all. The key to success, Busheska says, is to be unafraid of failure, impervious to naysayers, and being true to yourself.

“There is no limit to what you can accomplish,” she says. “Things will be difficult, and there will be doubters, especially if you’re doing something that’s never been done before. But our job is to prove to ourselves that our vision works, and then share that vision with others. If you never give up and push through the challenges, you’ll get to see what’s on the other side.”