Vice President of Community Outreach Candidates
Why are you running for this executive position?
I'm running for VP of Community Outreach for the second year because of my strong experience and passion for engineering outreach. At UW, I've been involved in SWE Outreach, Women in Computing Outreach, and Allen School Ambassadors. Having this extensive background in outreach, I'm knowledgeable about everything that goes into the process: from coordinating needs with schools to presenting intellectually-engaging and hands-on content for students. I'm eager to prioritize quality over quantity by identifying specific topics for events and ensuring that no matter how many students we work with, each one receives the same care and attention they deserve. The true value of SWE outreach is the opportunity for younger students to cultivate a connection with college students. Personally, I never thought I would end up majoring in what I am today in college — the reason I felt confident enough to was through these types of outreach programs. Outreach has the power to influence younger women who often falsely feel like they don’t deserve or have the capability to learn and study engineering that they can, and I’d really like to continue working for that cause as VP of Community Outreach. Re-building our mentorship program, identifying UW and Seattle outreach events to present at, and partnering with more outreach organizations on campus, are just some of the many ideas I have for the upcoming year based on our successes and setbacks over the past few years in SWE Outreach, and I would love the opportunity to get started on implementing these awesome changes to grow our program. I’m also very interested in engaging our own SWE community, you all, to get involved with outreach by creating more outlets and streamlined processes to help out in our events and build your own skills and community here at UW SWE.
What is your past involvement with SWE at UW?
I’ve been involved in UW SWE Outreach leadership since my very first quarter my freshman year. I first served as a committee lead for the high school outreach mentorship program Forward with SWE (FWS), then moving to High School Outreach Director, overseeing three branches: FWS, Engineering Exploration Conference, and High School Events. Each of these branches had 3-6 committee members dedicated to different missions and goals for high schoolers. I acted as the FWS committee lead having extensive knowledge about the mentorship program, helped lead the Engineering Exploration Conference to a successful event, and supervised building the entire High School Events program from scratch. This year, I’ve moved to Vice President of Community Outreach, getting a chance to supervise our middle school, high school, and 2-year programs. Supervising 30+ members cross-teams, I’ve created new curriculum on relevant topics like college preparedness, developed relationships with partner organizations like Washington GEARUP, and hosted large-scale conferences at UW, reaching over 300+ students. Outreach is truly my main passion that I’ve been involved in since I first got to UW, and I would love to finish up my final year here continuing my work in this wonderful and important branch to leave a lasting impact on UW SWE.