Young Sophie Araque-Liu is the winner of the Doodle for Google 2022 contest. Sophie is based in Florida and is presently a junior at Martin County High School in Stuart, Florida. 

Her artwork, titled “Not Alone”, was chosen as Florida’s winner and nominee in the 14th annual Doodle for Google competition amongst thousands of entries, making her one of 54 students, each representing their state, to compete in the contest. This was her first ever nomination after she had been submitting her artwork for years. 

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The theme for the contest was “I care for myself by…”, and each of the 54 contestants was to draw a doodle on that theme. Sophie made her doodle using an image of her hugging her mom.

In her submission, she wrote – “Often I struggle to shoulder a burden on my own and forget that I have so many people, like my mom, who care about me and want to help. Opening up and letting others support me not only relieves my stress, [but] it [also] lets me tackle things I could never do on my own.”

Her submission was announced by Google as one of the 5 national finalists in the Doodle for Google contest after her theme struck a chord with the judges, who were singer-songwriter and pop star – Selena Gomez, model and mental health activist – Elyse Fox, and the 2021 National Teacher of the Year – Juliana Urtubey.

From there, her submission ended up as the last doodle standing, and she was declared the national winner.

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As the national winner, Sophie bagged a coveted $30,000 college scholarship, and her artwork is being displayed on the google home page through the month of August. Further, her school shall receive a $50,000 tech package for the establishment or improvement of a computer lab or technology program. 

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Sophie is an extremely private person. After her artwork had been selected as the nominee from Florida, she had spoken to TC Palm, which is the digital news site for Treasure Coast Newspapers of southeastern Florida, about how she viewed the recent spout of attention her success had brought her. She had said, “I’m not used to all the attention. But I’m so happy and so excited.”