NuVu graduate Pierre Zachary Belizaire came to the Cambridge design based high school for his junior and senior years, after being primarily homeschooled throughout his early education. With an urge to be surrounded by other kids his age, he and his family began a search for a school that could entertain his level of curiosity and hands-on interests.

“When my mother found NuVu online, she was like ‘Oh, this seems like just the place for my son.’”  Flash forward a few months later and the mother/son pair took a tour of NuVu. “I was walking around the space, got to meet some of the coaches, and was really fascinated by how everyone was creating and making things, and knew it was the place for me.”

Extremely shy at first, Pierre says that as the projects progressed, he began to come out of his shell. Through coaxing from the inspiring coaches, and the dynamic nature of the immersive design studios, this formerly introverted student discovered a bonding environment as he and fellow students problem solved, created and iterated their projects.

“At first, I thought my interest was simply in engineering-type studios, but the more studios I completed, the more I realized that a shift was beginning to happen,” he recalls. That shift is one that many NuVu high school students undergo as they are exposed to different types of projects throughout the year.

“I started to realize that I was actually more of a designer than an engineer, especially when looking at some of the projects I was doing and the role I put myself in,” he says. “I would always look at random things in the world and think ‘how can I make that look better?’ And that's kind of what made me realize, ‘oh, I'm actually a designer, not an engineer.’”

Explaining that his way of learning is more discovery-based, influenced by his dyslexia, Pierre says not only learning new subjects and information, but discovering just how he learns, has informed all of his education moving forward. “Project-based learning was exactly what I needed.”

Graduating this past summer from Wentworth Institute of Technology with a degree in Industrial Design, Pierre says that his NuVu experience truly helped him succeed in both his classes and his internship at Shark/Ninja.

“Being at NuVu helped develop my collaboration and communication skills. I hadn’t realized how much that would help me at the time, but so much of the collaborative aspect and learning of NuVu really guided me early on at college and carried over to the internship role. Learning this in high school, as compared to in college, felt like such an advantage.”

From homeschooled to college graduate, Pierre says that he’ll carry his NuVu experience with him in whatever role he lands after graduation. “It was a transformative experience, for sure.”

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