The Fall quarter of 2024 and the Winter quarter of 2025, I participated in CBE’s IT Leadership club. This is student-led club guided by Professor Li to inspire our own interest in the tech world by engaging in personal passion projects. ITL, as it’s otherwise known, developed my presenting skills, inspired me to partake in the development in technology involving AI, and eventually led me to do a case study on my dad. The height of my journey in ITL was working with my father to craft an in-depth presentation about his working career as a software engineer. With my help, he crafted the telling of his story to incorporate lessons learned from consulting, working at a fortune 100 company, and startups. This club taught me to pursue curiosity, collaboration on imagination, presentation, and learning what it takes to follow through. (Fall 2024 and Winter 2025)

Out of all the Lunch and Learns I had been to, one impacted me the most. It focused on Jewish American artists in Western’s collections. It’s important to start with how there are different aspects to Jewish identity. It is a culture, religion, ethnicity, and can mean more. Therefore, one individual’s experience can drastically differ from another, even if they both identify as Jewish. Throughout the Lunch and Learn, we continued to dive deeper into the complexity of Jewish identity and how that complexity can even be seen when trying to label “Jewish art.” It’s hard, if not impossible, to define, but Jewish expression is real. We ended the presentation by being shown how many of the staged outdoor art pieces were in fact created by Jewish artists. This hour opened my eyes. (May 21st, 2025)

During the Winter and Spring Quarter of 2025, I participated in the CBE’s Peer Mentor program. The program’s intention was to create belonging and community between individuals at different stages in their academic career. From the beginning of my mentorship, my mentee and I established clear goals with communication and expectations with how we were going to show up for each other. Although the initial intention of our dynamic was a bit one-sided, we realized that there were strengths on which we each could mentor for each other. This relationship with my mentee has taught me to create expectations, but also to hold those expectations lightly and reassess as time goes on. The expectations and intention at the beginning of our relationship no longer completely serves our mission together. (Winter and Spring 2025)

My first quarter back was Fall of 2023, where I was given the opportunity from my comfortably tech support role, to follow my heart and return to school to finish my degree. This time was a transitioning period from full-time 8-5 work to 20 hours per week with a scattered schedule. I was one of the tech support leaders responsible for one of my company’s products, and due to the nature of my position, not being fully available during the workday taught me many vital lessons. Not only did I have to use my time wisely, but I had to level up my communication such that the needs of the customer did not get left behind. Despite me being in a leadership role for an entire year prior, this shift taught me to delegate my responsibility and trust completely in the ability of my colleagues. I also learned valuable lessons in coaching when standards were not met. (Fall 2023)