Name
Alyx Merritt

District
Illinois-Eastern Iowa

Year in School / Grade
Junior

University
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Major(s)
Computer Science

Minor(s)
Spanish

In 3-5 sentence, tell us about yourself.
Hello, my name is Alyx Merritt! I am from Bloomington-Normal, Illinois and am currently a junior majoring in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I started my K-Family journey in Key Club seven years ago in my freshman year of high school and now I’m finishing up my term as Club President and District Treasurer in CKI. Outside of CKI activities, I play piccolo for the Marching Illini, am a member of Women in Computer Science on campus, am a Cargill Global Scholar, and am an Enterprise Technology Intern at State Farm. I love board games and movies with my favorites being Betrayal at House on the Hill and Pitch Perfect respectively.

What are you most looking forward to about your year as governor?
I’m most looking forward to connecting with people throughout the district and internationally this year as governor. Through attending my first District Convention last year and being involved in club and district leadership, I’ve met so many amazing people in CKI and the K-Family as a whole from around the world. I’m excited to work with the new district board, club boards, and our members to utilize the tools we’ve learned in this past, mainly virtual, year to connect clubs when it’s challenging to meet in-person as well as to engage more with the other K-Family organizations in our district.

Favorite CKI Memory
There are so many memories to choose from as CKI has really become my home and a defining part of my college experience. If I had to choose just one, I would go with I-I CKI District Convention 2019-2020, the first district event in the K-Family I attended. It was hosted on our university’s campus, we had speakers and workshops, and I met members from other schools. Thanks to some persistence from the board at the time I also ran for District Treasurer, to which I was elected, and my love for as well as my opportunities in CKI have only grown since.

Favorite Service Project
My favorite service project is volunteering at Eastern Illinois Foodbank. I actually started my involvement with this amazing organization in high school through Key Club as they have Foodmobile events to bring food to communities in the area. We would serve 100-200+ families once a month and I loved getting to talk with individuals while helping to carry a box to their cars. Their main location is only about ten minutes from my campus so I have attended several food repack events since I started college and CKI because I saw for myself in Key Club the positive impact their organization had on individuals in the community.