Olivia Blackmon is an honors undergraduate researcher at Western Kentucky University majoring in Chinese and international affairs. An aspiring polyglot, she has demonstrated proficiency in four languages — English, Chinese, Korean and Spanish — and has experience with many others. Blackmon is Midwestern US champion of the Confucius Institute Chinese Speech Competition and is a National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-y) Korea scholar. She seeks to use her language skills to build bridges across cultures.