Living an Impact-Focused Life

What’s your Why?

I believe I was put on this earth to:

• Help people that are less fortunate
• Use my voice to fight for others
• Solve problems
• Learn, fail, and grow

My purpose is to:

• Develop solutions that better people’s lives, share knowledge, make people happy

I believe (my core values):

• Honesty, fairness, equality, balance, determination, curiosity

The one thing I must do before I die is:

• Travel: meeting people and learning cultures

 

My advocates and supporters all believe I:

• Am smart, inquisitive and a hard worker

 

 

The evil I want to eradicate in this world is:

• Diseases that harm people or jeopardize any person’s health
• Unfair treatment of people in any context
• Ignorance

 

 

I want to work in order to:

• Use my degree to make a difference by working for a company that makes high-quality products that impact people’s health and well-being positively across the globe by helping people do more, feel better, and live longer
• Influence or change how people see the world

 

 

 

Walk the Talk – Your How

If you are truly committed to your Why, you show it in your everyday behavior. It is all air until you do it. Working from your Why, How do you prove that you are true to your Why in all you do?

 

I always:

• Am nice to others
• Ask others how they feel
• Tell people thank you or that I appreciate them

 

I never:

• Boast, brag, or degrade others for their opinions

 

 

My work style is:

• I like to work collaboratively, while also having time to reflect afterward on everything

 

 

I try to treat people:

• Respectfully, fair, and kindly

 

 

I approach problems by:

• Doing research on current problem
• Brainstorming multiple solutions, and then finally selecting the best one

 

 

Victories are time to:

• Pause momentarily and congratulate yourself for your hard work

 

 

 

If another attacks my point of view I:

• Defend myself but also hear them out

 

 

If I fundamentally do not agree with what an organization or person is doing, I will:

• Speak up and say my opinion

 

 

 

 

Your Credibility – Your Whats

You have just spent some considerable time at Lehigh, and specifically in the Global Social Impact Fellowship, on many whats. Your whats include lab research, formal presentations, writing research papers, engaging with people in other cultural contexts, building prototypes, designing and building systems, raising funds, hiring employees, etc. The whats you have collected along the way are critical to your credibility when you are entering the workforce or applying to the best graduate and professional schools. They signify a credible currency to which organizations can assign value. Create a list of your Whats that are truly reflective of your Why & How.  You did these things because you believe (Why) and you acquired them in the following (How) manner. These are examples you can use in interviews.

What Have I Done	List of Experiences, Accomplishments, and Lessons Learned
Degrees, Minors, Certificates, Fellowships	Major: Supply Chain Management Minor: Business Information Systems Fellowships: Global Social Impact Fellowship
Research Experiences	Global Social Impact Fellowship: Research Fellow Mountaintop Summer Research
Inventions and Innovations	PlasTech Recycling Solutions
(Social) Entrepreneurial Ventures	PlasTech Ventures
Publications (Formal and Informal)	Comparing PET bricks to conventional concrete masonry units
Formal Presentations (at Lehigh and Beyond)	GSIF presentations Management presentations Supply chain presentations Entrepreneurship classes presentations Internship presentations on process improvements
Awards and External Recognition	Dean’s List

 

Articulating and learning from GSIF-related Experiences. For each of these prompts, we want you to identify one and only one specific and compelling event/incident/experience/moment and identify exactly how you grew personally and professionally through that moment.

Teamwork Experience (and Lessons Learned)	During GSIF, I learned a lot through our interdisciplinary team. Being that I was not an engineer, I really enjoyed hearing their ideas and their perspective on different decisions. One example is how Laura always mentioned the materials science perspective before we made a solid decision.     Lessons Learned: I would not have known about various machineries and their outputs if it weren’t for this team. I also learned to be comfortable asking questions since I was not familiar with different things at first.
Conflict Resolution Experience (and Lessons Learned)	This summer during Mountaintop, being that it was virtual, some members of the team had different schedules. Sometimes, someone would be busy while others weren’t, or vice versa. We instead picked a time that worked for everyone weekly rather than trying to always meet at different times.   Lessons Learned: It’s important to be flexible and respect other’s time (especially during a pandemic when everyone has a lot going on).
Leadership Experience (and Lessons Learned)	I took the lead on the website this summer and fall semester. It was taking a while for LTS to transfer possession into my account, and I did not want the team to think I was slacking. I told them I requested access and I kept calling to make sure I would get access and eventually I did.   Lessons Learned: Be persistent, and also be upfront with others about your progress.
Dealing with Chaos, Ambiguity, and Uncertainty (and Lessons Learned)	I feel like there is a lot of chaos and uncertainty during Venturewell E-Team Meetings. I always feel like the other teams have more developed ideas and have conducted more stakeholder interviews; I feel intimidated at times. However, I have learned that they are really understanding. The other teams are there to learn too, and they want to help people that are in similar positions as them.   Lessons Learned: Keep believing in your idea and solution. Not everything can be done overnight. Keep asking questions when necessary.
Personally Challenging Experience (and Lessons Learned)	A personally challenging experience I had was this past summer during Mountaintop. I had to babysit my two nieces while also doing research since my sister and her husband were essential workers. I tried to balance the workload and work on mountaintop-related things at night when my nieces went to sleep.  I also think my niece screamed during a Zoom meeting once too. I told my members of the team this and they would try to have meetings at night too so I was not overworking myself.     Lessons Learned: Be upfront with team members about what you can handle. Be honest if you need their help.
Cross-cultural Experience (and Lessons Learned)	We have been reaching out a lot to stakeholders in the Philippines, but not receiving much feedback. We were wondering why this was the case, but it was because they do not check their emails much. People in the Philippines prefer Facebook Messenger or WeChat for communicating with others, which we soon realized. We now try to use these methods when reaching out to them.   Lessons Learned: You may have to adapt your original way of doing things.
An experience that helped you connect your GSIF work to your discipline / major.	Finding percentages of plastics in the waste stream and understanding the junk shop’s role in recycling in the Philippines.     Lessons Learned: It was necessary to learn if PET (our target material) was abundant in the waste stream so we could continue making brick prototypes.
A moment that boosted your sense of agency and self-efficacy – you felt like you can speak for yourself, get stuff done, take on the world and make it better.	We have been having trouble getting in contact with stakeholders, but after finally securing a stakeholder interview I felt really accomplished. It was also really cool talking to someone that had never heard of our project before. They offered a new perspective that could potentially lead us to a new customer segment of construction companies.
A moment where you felt like you truly have a strong sense of purpose and belonging in this dynamic, globalized interdependent world.	During Venturewell, we met with someone who really liked our idea. He even said, “What’s stopping you from moving to the Philippines and doing it right now?” He was really passionate about our project and was the most enthusiastic about it out of everyone I had talked too, and it made me feel like the progress we have made so far was really worth it and had a strong purpose.