This is the 15th profile of 20 about The Gazette’s Best & Brightest Class of 2011.

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Samantha Olvera has a long list of accomplishments and personal triumphs, but the moment she has singled out as defining her is one in which she tried, struggled and failed.

She was on a school cross-country ski trip to the White Mountains in California, having never skied nor snowboarded a day in her life.

She set off with a “what’s so hard about this” attitude but her inexperience dragged the group down and no one reached the mountain’s summit.

“It was bigger than acing a test or running around a track,” Olvera said. “I don’t think of a challenge as something I must conquer, but rather something that I will attempt with everything I have, possibly fail and be a better person for trying and learning something along the way.”

It is a positive attitude held by a teen who spent much of her young life dealing with the effects of having been born with a cleft palette, a debilitating result of Pierre Robin Syndrome.

“It definitely has affected me in a lot of ways,” said Olvera, who was born in Italy. “I just never really found it to be an obstacle in my daily life. I’ve just done the best I can with it.”

It has been four years since her last surgery. Though she now hates hospitals, Olvera has narrowed her future plans to become a biomedical engineer, melding her own healthcare experiences with her love for science.

“I kind of want to go into global health technologies and work on problems in developing countries,” she said.

She’s also pumped her past and future into her community service work.

As a volunteer at the Challenger Learning Center, she’s taught children about space and engineering.

For her Girl Scout Gold Award, Olvera implemented the Ronald McDonald Club at Fountain Valley School, with the goal of running donation campaigns to benefit the place her family called home during her scary first months of life.

SAMANTHA OLVERA

Fountain Valley School

Parents: Emily and Val Olvera

College Plans: Rice University, biomedical engineering major

Other: El Pomar Scholar; Hispanic Honor Society; Cross Country Academic All-State; Froelicher Society; Fountain Valley School’s Ronald McDonald Club, founder.

Samantha Olvera Photo by