Jordan Burstion is a graduate of Jack Britt High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She has at times called parts of South Carolina, Virginia, Kansas, and South Korea home throughout her upbringing as a military child. As the oldest of three children she is grateful for the opportunity to have served as a big sister to her siblings as they and their parents traveled the world.
Traveling the world impressed upon Jordan an appreciation for culture, affinity for foreign language, and ambition to seek out the experiences that would afford her the skills requisite of an impactful global citizen. After experimenting with different languages, she found a knack for Spanish language, using her excitement for the language to transcend the limitations of monolinguals and experience once in a lifetime opportunities from representing her county at North Carolina’s Governor’s School for Spanish to tutoring her school’s foreign exchange student. She is proud of and thankful for the benefits of foreign language and worked to instill those same feelings of achievement in others as a member, and two-term President of her school’s chapter of the Spanish National Honor Society.
Her dedication to Spanish Language began in the middle school, however, high school introduced her to additional extracurricular pursuits: National Honor Society, Math and Science Honor Society, the Fayetteville Cumberland Youth Council, Biology Olympiad, and the most challenging and transformative of them all: Cross Country. The academic rigor she pursued in the classroom was balanced by relaxing and enriching activities outside of the classroom: looking forward to guest speaker engagements, volunteering at the local library, and conducting research and advertisement for her mentorship start-up: Girls L.E.AD. (Learn. Empower. Act. Dream) which gathered young girls in a book club setting where the investigation of personal topics fostered empowering introspection and gave the girls a platform upon which they can act on their dreams and effect change in their community.
Now, Jordan is a student at Duke University (T ’20) and selected Duke for its undergraduate research opportunities, commitment to public service, and culture of entrepreneurship. She is currently pursuing a major in Chemistry with a Certificate in Innovation & Entrepreneurship. A degree in chemistry provides her with the opportunity to explore a valuable approach to problem solving, to synthesize information, make predictions, develop a procedure of investigation, and effectively communicate scientific information to others. The Innovation and Entrepreneurship certificate affords Jordan the programmatic support to apply “thinking like a chemist” to a creative endeavor.
Interestingly, when a cosmetics venture failed in elementary school, she not only learned that recess is a terrible time to talk numbers and strategy, but also that she loved bringing people together, rallying them around an idea, and building something from nothing. Fortunately, her attempts at project management thereafter were more fruitful. Jordan is currently participating in the Duke Summer Accelerator for her venture My Hair Care App which aims to revolutionize the way women navigate the beauty aisle and eradicate “bad” hair days.
