Christopher Laing

Many people experience hardships of one type or another growing up, but everyone has a choice: let those hardships crush you or rise above them. Christopher has chosen the latter. He fulfilled his lifelong interest in entrepreneurship at the age of 12 by creating and managing a network of websites geared towards promoting a website called Points2shop.com, to which he has referred over 20,000 people so far. Chris’s websites rank high on Google, are worth thousands, and have over 3.2 million pageviews. Most importantly, they allow him to take care of his day-to-day expenses, and give back via the Knowledge is Power Program, a charity for students in under-resourced communities that enrolls them in free charter schools. You may not hear Chris speaking about his accomplishments, as he is an affable, modest person, but no doubt those who benefit from his efforts will. Chris, who is from Beacon, NY, plans to major in Economics and Minor in Computer Science and plans to attend University of Virginia this fall.