Women Rising to the Top
My Spring quarter, sophomore year at UW, I took MGMT 490: Special Topics in Management. The special topic for my class was Women in Leadership taught by the famous and awesome Cate Goethals. I was unsure what the class was going to be about but I have always been passionate about women in leadership so I jumped into the class ready to go. I quickly found out that the class was aimed towards ourselves and discovering what we wanted to do with our careers. I instantly fell in love with the books, speakers, and assignments because every piece was helping me grow my leadership skills and helping me understand what my true passions were.
Since I have always been an advocate for more women in the business world, this class was important for me to take to learn the skills I needed to get to the C-suite. Through this experience, I was able to discover my true potential, learn my leadership style, and understand my strengths. I took those learning experiences and applied them to my leadership roles following me in college. When interviewing for internships, I was able to highlight my strengths and articulate why they were my strengths by bringing in particular personality traits I discovered while strength finding. With learning my leadership style, I was able to bring those traits to my roles in the Undergraduate Women in Business clubs when leading large groups of members and teams.
Through this class, we were assigned to create a vision board, present a mini-TED talk, keep a journal, and read a book; I was assigned Own It by Sallie Krawcheck. Own It was amazing and it brought to light the little, but important, ways women are treated differently in the office. I still remember reading about office temperatures and they are kept low because men wear more layers with their suit while women are always cold because they wear less layers such a dresses and blouses. Keeping a journal provided me a reflection opportunity to see how I grew over the quarter. I presented my mini-TED talk on “Don’t judge a person by their age” and I was always looked upon differently because I was very young for what I was accomplishing. My favorite assignment was the vision board as I laid out exactly where I wanted to go and the goals I wanted to reach.
Competencies Gained
Personal Values
Every quarter in a class, I do a values activity so way or another. This round, I was able to dive deeper into those values and apply them to the goals I wanted to achieve. I highly value success, continuous learning, and financial stability. I discovered how they all fit in my goal of becoming a CEO of a fortune 500 company. Being CEO is a great success in itself but also being CEO means you are always learning from others. Even the path to this success requires knowledge of many areas of business and learning every day. Financial stability is very important in my personal and professional life. I want to not have to stress about my finances, but I am also frugal in how I spend. With my future company, I want it to be sustainable through the unpredictable that the future can hold.
Goals
I have goals in life and especially in my career. My long-term goal is to become CEO of a Fortune 500 company and I hope that company is Disney. My short-term goal is to obtain a full-time position after I participate in the college program but while in the program, do as many informational interviews and learn as much as possible to set me apart from others applying to the full-time roles. My goals keep me motivated and I wake up every day thinking what I can do today to help me achieve those goals. Sometimes it is finding someone to do an informational interview with other times it is reading an article on how to improve my communication skills. Whatever it is, I want to make sure it is benefiting me in reaching my long-term goals.
An assignment in this class was keeping a journal and creating entries every week. As I continued to write in the journal throughout the quarter, I would peak back and reflect on how far I had come in just the few short weeks. I realized how much advice I took from speakers and applied it to my daily life. The journal was a huge reflection piece for me and even to this day, I look back and am able to see how much I have grown over the past two years and how I am reaching the goals I set for myself back then.
Reflection and Appliction
There are many companies I can work for, even many that I am interested in pursuing. It is not an easy decision to choose which direction to take my career, but the decision has to be made. Through this class, I have learned to make quicker and more critically thought out decisions for not only my career but also for the other organizations I am a part of. Then, after the decision is made, sticking with it and showing people why my choice was the right one. I make decisions every day, some small and some that will have an impact on others, but thinking quickly on my feet about which one will fit best for my overall goal and sense of direction is the decision I make.
Decision Making
One portion of this class was presenting a mini TEDtalk on something we are passionate about. I chose to speak on not judging someone’s ability to succeed on their age. I have always been underestimated because I have been the youngest one at the table but many times, I have more experience than my colleagues sitting across from me. I am always advocating for people to look past the age of someone’s ability to succeed or do the job because that should not matter when choosing an employee. What matters is their ability to do the job to one’s satisfaction. Where ever I go in my career, I will always be thinking of how someone could help our organization and not think are they old enough to do this role.
Advocating for a Point of View
This experience is incomparable to any other class I have taken at UW. Not only didn’t it allow me the space to truly figure myself out, I was able to work through situations with my peers. I have been influenced by this class to always be adapting my vision board to keep myself on track in my personal and professional life. Due to the vision board I created in this class and the visual motivation it provided, I have landed a position at my dream company. I gained insight not only about myself but also how to lead others to achieve their dreams and aspirations.
DisneyLand, Spring Break 2017
Volunteering at Boeing Family Day, 2018
Cover of Book read in class
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