Alena Analeigh Wicker Rewrites the Rules So We Raise Our Glass!

At Stoney Wines, we believe in celebrating individuals who have made the world a better, safer & more innovative place. This week, we raise our glass to Alena Analeigh Wicker—the youngest Black person ever accepted into medical school, a NASA intern, and a founder whose mission is making sure no Black girl in STEM ever feels alone in her ambition.

Alena was born in Fontana, California, adopted as a young child, and raised outside Fort Worth, Texas, by a mother she describes as her greatest champion. She graduated high school at 12. She was nearly halfway through her undergraduate coursework at two universities—Arizona State University and Oakwood University—by 13. And in May 2022, she received an early acceptance letter from the UAB Heersink School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, becoming the youngest Black person in U.S. history to be accepted into medical school—and the second-youngest person overall.

She posted her acceptance letter on Instagram with a caption that stopped the internet: "Statistics would have said I never would have made it. A little Black girl adopted from Fontana, California. I've worked so hard to reach my goals and live my dreams."

Alena didn't stumble into medicine by accident. She was drawn to biology after a trip to Jordan with her foundation, falling in love with the science of living things and the possibility of healing them. She wants to be a doctor. She also wants to work with NASA. Not one or the other—both. Fully. Completely.

And she's already started.

Alena became the youngest intern ever at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory—adding yet another historic milestone to a resume that most adults would envy. She has met with astronaut and trailblazer Dr. Mae Carol Jemison. She is building the kind of career, at 17, that most people spend a lifetime working toward.

But what sets Alena apart isn't just what she's achieved—it's why she's doing it.

She founded the Brown STEM Girl Foundation, an organization that provides scholarships to students of color pursuing STEM careers and takes young girls on international STEM experiences. She has led groups of girls ages 12 to 17 on STEM trips abroad, showing them firsthand that Black girl representation in science isn't a dream—it's a reality they can inhabit right now.

"I want to inspire the girls," she has said. "I want them to see that there are no limits."

She's said it. She's living it. And she's building the infrastructure to make sure others can too.

As a Black girl STEM prodigy, Alena carries the weight of representation with extraordinary grace. She understands that her acceptance letter wasn't just personal—it was a message to every young Black girl who has been told she's too young, too different, too unlikely to belong in medicine or science. She is proof that those limits were never real.

Her story is still unfolding. She is 17 years old. She hasn't yet graduated medical school, hasn't yet worked at NASA full-time, hasn't yet done a fraction of what she's going to do. And that—more than any single achievement—is the most exciting part.

So as we pour a glass of Stoney Wines this month, we honor Alena Analeigh Wicker for her brilliance, her discipline, and her fierce commitment to making sure the next generation of Black girls in medicine knows exactly where they belong: everywhere.

🥂 Here's to Alena—a doctor in training, a space scientist in the making, and a young woman already changing the world before she's old enough to vote. Cheers to her journey and the countless girls she's bringing along with her.

Know a young person defying the odds and inspiring others? Drop their name in the comments—we'd love to raise our glass to them too.