The 17-year-old Ann Arbor Huron High School senior came to the United States at age 3. Now, she's been named one of America's top citizens by the Friends of Alexander Hamilton Foundation.

The 2-year-old award is given to students who "are capable of achieving great things in their lives." The award recognizes community involvement, school accomplishments and other philanthropic and leadership initiatives. Jenny won the Alexander Hamilton Citizenship Achievement Award.

Jenny said her travels to China to visit family have been life-changing. She gets choked up when she talks about seeing how driven the Chinese people were to acquire material possessions to the exclusion of a massive impoverished population. Her father, Yanming An, a professor at Clemson University, is currently on sabbatical in China. Her mother, Shanping Qiu, works for the University of Michigan Center for Autism and Communication Disorders.

"She is a young woman with a deep commitment to social justice, her school, her community, her world. Jenny's determined outlook may come from the fact that her parents managed to escape from China during the Cultural Revolution and she wants to prevent the tragedies she has heard of -- uprooted families, death and destroyed communities -- from happening again. Deep down she knows not to take anything for granted, even an exciting high school life in America's heartland," George Cox, president of the Friends of Alexander Hamilton Foundation said in a statement announcing Jenny's platinum-level award. The award comes with $500 prize as well as a spot on a foundation advisory board.

As a member of the National Honor Society, she organized and ran a dance for a Mercy Corps humanitarian aid project in Africa. After the 2004 tsunami, she planned a Penny War that raised $1,000 for the victims. She is also president of her high school's chapter of Interact, a volunteer organization that is a Rotary Club project.

She's editor-in-chief of her high school yearbook and a reporter for the school newspaper. She's involved in the drama organizations at school and in the community. She works with a City of Ann Arbor program that addresses minority advancement, secondary education, sex education and pregnancy prevention; and is assistant chair at the Young Women for Change, an offshoot of the Michigan Women's Foundation.

Jenny has worked as a birthday party host for the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum and as an intern at the local public access TV channel. Somehow, she finds time to be a concert violinist. In 2005, her high school symphony orchestra won a Grammy Gold Award and Jenny was among those honored.

Jenny aspires to be a journalist who covers the arts and cultural awareness issues. She isn't sure where she'll go to college. "Knowing what's going on in the world is so important, and I want to bring people that information."

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