Spencer Moros

Living an Impact-Focused Life

What’s your Why?

I believe I was put on this earth to:

• Live my life in a way that I have no regrets
• Help others without hurting myself
• Specialize and be the best at what I decide to do

 

 

My purpose is to:

• Leave those I come across better than before I met them

 

 

I believe (my core values):

• You shouldn’t have regrets
• There are no wrong paths in life
• Happiness and helping is paramount

 

 

The one thing I must do before I die is:

• Earn my Medical Doctorate
• Be fulfilled with the life I have lived

 

 

My advocates and supporters all believe I:

• Have a passion for people and will find happiness for myself and those around me

 

 

The evil I want to eradicate in this world is:

• Egocentricity

 

 

I want to work in order to:

• Help others in a way that helps myself

 

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:

• Try to find the benefit in everything and try to learn and grow

 

I never:

• Compromise my values or beliefs

 

My work style is:

• 1000% for a select amount of time with breaks in between
• If I hit a wall to work on something else and return to it

 

I try to treat people:

• Like they are having the worst day of their life

 

I approach problems by:

MY

• Freaking out, procrastinate
• Talking to others
• Writing out an explicit approach
• Break down the approach even more into more manageable pieces, then break it down again so that my goals
• Adjust my approach as I am doing it and continue to refine

 

OTHERS

• Put myself in their shoes
• View from outside perspective
• Compare the two views and see what is logical (and what may be due to emotions of the individual)
• Plan out something to say that will not offend them
• Verbalize what I believe
• Listen to their response
• Refine my idea of a potential solution until we come to something we agree on

 

Victories are time to:

• Reload for the next challenge

 

If another attacks my point of view I:

• Try to not take personal offense and reflect on my viewpoint and why it is such

 

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

• Try even harder to understand where they are coming from and speak with them

 

 

 

 

Your Credibility – Your Whats – Who will fight with you aside from yourself?

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	Emergency Medical Technician Basic Bachelor of Science – Bioengineering – Pharmaceuticals Global Social Impact Fellow
Research Experiences	Lehigh University – Brown Lab – Antibiotic Resistance Lehigh Valley Hospital Research Scholar St. Luke’s Hospital Research Intern GSIF
Inventions and Innovations	Google Sheets-based database
(Social) Entrepreneurial Ventures	Ukweli Test Strips
Publications (Formal and Informal)	Case Study of Data-Centric Approach   Process Simulation of Monoclonal Antibody Production in Bacteria   Outer Membrane Vesical
Formal Presentations (at Lehigh and Beyond)	IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference
Awards and External Recognition

 

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)	Interviewing CHWs for WhatsApp Communication study: Countless CHWs need to be interviewed, sometimes with little notice, but when something needs to be done someone always stepped up, watching others do this encouraged me to do so (in other involvements outside of GSIF as well).
Conflict Resolution Experience (and Lessons Learned)	Communication was poor: It is easier to ask how someone is doing rather than why they haven’t done something, they usually admit to themselves and the team where they have been slacking on their own.
Leadership Experience (and Lessons Learned)	Data model: Took database into my own hands and applied my knowledge without consulting with anyone, having a consult with someone may have destroyed my system, was more important to finish system to give others a full picture of what I was trying to accomplish.
Dealing with Chaos, Ambiguity, and Uncertainty (and Lessons Learned)	Interview at 8am without any briefing (woke up at 6:30am): It is important to review ahead of time when people are available instead of waiting for the last second, however if you are in a situation where others are not available it is important to take a breath and create a plan to utilize all your resources to be the best prepared you can be.
Personally Challenging Experience (and Lessons Learned)	Researching funding opportunities for the venture: Seemed like an impossible task and many times opportunities only led to a brick wall Instead of defining success as finding an opportunity to apply for at the moment, redefined success as updating the proposal and communicating with foundations and others who have expertise in the area, applying for funding may come later, however this work directly prepares for that.
Cross-cultural Experience (and Lessons Learned)	WhatsApp Study Interview: Pre-interviews were conducted to better understand the phone usage habits of CHWs and their involvement with maternal mortality and Ukweli A lesson learned about other cultures is the great differences in communication. In my interviews in particular I found that questions were most effective when they were direct and to the point and that one question should be asked at a time. This took some trial and error in order to improve.
An experience that helped you connect your GSIF work to your discipline / major.	Data model development: This task connects to engineering in that I was given desired functions, got an idea, created a concept, planned, designed, created, and polished.
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.	Finishing data model: When I finished entering the equations and setting up the forums and had a fully functional system. For me this was important because I identified an important task, identified potential solutions, and through trial and error constructed a system which fulfilled the desired specifications and exceeded them as well by allowing for additions in the future. In most of my previous projects at one or more of these
A moment where you felt like you truly have a strong sense of purpose and belonging in this dynamic, globalized interdependent world.	Reviewing testing data: This moment came to me recently while reviewing the data of tests that have been done and the results of those tests. The number of women tested was surprisingly high, and the proportion of women who tested positive for UTIs and/or preeclampsia. Although they were numbers on a screen, each one represented a baby, and a mother who as a direct result of Ukweli have been diagnosed and received treatment, who otherwise could have died.