About & Mission

SMG Mosaic started with five Princeton students from very different starting points: different families, different cities, different kinds of hard. What we share is this: at some point, each of us got our hands on AI tools and used them to build a way forward. Projects that opened doors. Small wins that compounded into confidence. Rooms we never expected to be in.

That experience left us with a conviction: AI is the greatest equalizer we’ve encountered. Everyone is new to it, which means the head start doesn’t go to whoever has the most. It goes to whoever picks it up and uses it with intent. And what it builds first isn’t the project; it’s the builder’s belief that they can make something real.

We also kept noticing a gap: the students with the most drive to build often had the least access to the room where building happens. So Mosaic is us paying our experience forward: a program where the entry price is curiosity, not credentials, and where a scattered idea (half-formed, unpolished, entirely untested) is treated as exactly where a builder is supposed to begin.

Uplift others with grace. We’re here to give back to the students who need it most, and our hope is that one day they carry it forward to others who need it too. That is the heart of Mosaic.

Build with courage. Anyone with an idea can build something greater than they imagined. We want students to chase the ideas that sound crazy, and to know they can succeed no matter where they’re starting from.

Grow together. No one builds alone. Mosaic is a community as much as a curriculum. Students form friendships, support each other when problems come up, and leave with a network of trust that stays with them long after the program ends.

SMG Mosaic exists because Seoul Medical Group, one of the largest healthcare organizations serving Korean American communities, believes the health of a community includes the health of its opportunities. Their culture of giving keeps this program free for every student in it, and it’s generosity we intend to pay forward, cohort after cohort.

The program runs three months, twelve weeks in all, and each month builds on the one before. Students go from a first idea to a finished project they’ve built and shipped themselves.

• Month one: Foundations. Students turn an idea into a design with Claude, learn how AI actually works, and pick up the real fundamentals: how a computer and the terminal work, Git and GitHub, and writing their first lines of code.
• Month two: Building. Students learn how data and APIs power real applications, then choose a capstone track (technical, creative, or entrepreneurial) and start building, with a guest builder sharing how they got their start.
• Month three: Shipping. With mentorship at every step, students build their capstone, then polish, deploy, and present it at commencement: a finished project that’s genuinely theirs.

No two students build the same thing. The path is shared, but the mosaic each student assembles along it is their own.