Leadership Experiences
During my time at Penn State thus far, I have taken on leadership roles and taken part in many leadership retreats that shaped my understanding of what leadership is and how it can be embodied genuinely and effectively.
Software Engineering Summit
I am excited to have taken part in Capital One's Software Engineering Summit! This experience has strengthened my skills in technologies such as Amazon Web Services, iOS Mobile App Development and Arduino while also preparing me for a career in Software Engineering. In order to apply for this amazing opportunity, I taught myself JavaScript, CSS, React, and HTML to create a Restaurant Recommender Web App that uses the Yelp API and the Google Maps API to recommend restaurants to users based on their search preferences. This project can be found through the Software Engineering tab above.
Since the beginning of my first semester at Penn State, I have been a member of the EcoReps program that is run by Penn State's Sustainability Institute. Our role on campus as student educators in sustainability is to design creative project ideas with the goal of changing student behaviors to ones that are more environmentally friendly. I am now part of the EcoReps leadership team as the Assistant Programming Coordinator of the Building Programming Committee. I love leading my cohort of EcoReps through the process of event development from brainstorming to execution. Besides for my leadership role mentioned, I have been a part of projects that aimed to limit food waste in the University dining halls and support Penn State Football fans in correctly disposing their waste in the stadium. I have represented Penn State at the Be.HIVE "Climate Change Needs Behavioral Change" conference and ran multiple education events in the Penn State dining halls regarding more sustainable eating habits.
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During my tenure as Vice President of Penn State's Karaoke club, the roles I had were very diverse. One minute I would be troubleshooting a technical difficulty in our audio setup, and the next I would be encouraging new members to gain the courage to sing Take on Me in front of an audience. Besides for running sound and entertaining the crowd, I supervised many of the club's special events and creative projects. Whether it was setting up a pop-up Karaoke stand outside of Penn State's football stadium or playing Simon Cowell in the Karaoke Idol singing competition, my time with this organization was always exciting and engaging. I am no longer in this position for personal reasons.
Leadership Development Center
While my schoolwork is in engineering, this day long simulation assessed me on how well I can perform in a business setting. From giving presentations to company executives about storefront performances and promotion recommendations to having negotiations with our partners in a merger, this experience put my communication, presentation, and qualitative skills to the test. In addition to the activities listed above, I was tasked with appeasing unhappy customers as well as convincing local clients that our company's services and products were superior to our competition's.
This week long retreat made me realize that a leader is not one person in one position. It is a collaboration between anyone who shares the same values and are ready to tackle some of the world's greatest challenges. Inspired by the words of Xiuhtezcatl Martinez and Dolores Huerta, climate change and civil rights activists respectively, I took part in a multitude of discussions, self and peer reflections, and activities that taught valuable skills such as emotional intelligence and social change, among many others that have shaped how I choose to lead. Before the outbreak of COVID-19, I held the position of Student Coordinator for the May 2020 rendition of this retreat. This role consisted of planning for and facilitating retreat activities as well as guiding participants through their own journey.
Through the Schreyer Honors College, I was able to take part in the IGNITE social entrepreneurship retreat. This weekend event taught me how to better focus my creative energy when brainstorming solutions to problems in our society, to "be present" in a fast paced world, and to always approach people with empathetic curiosity. Because of some of the mentors I met on the retreat, such as Chad Littlefield, Spud Marshall and Tony Weaver Jr, I will cherish this experience for as long as I live.
The weekend retreat LionQuest focused on individual differences in leadership and roles in teams, using the Clifton Strengths Finder assessment as a basis for measuring what type of leader I would be. I found my top strengths to be Woo (Winning Over Others), Achiever, Communication, Context and Positivity. I spent most of the weekend learning what those traits meant to me, how they would best be applied in a leadership role, and what role would best suit me in a project team.