Vice President of Corporate Relations Candidates
Why are you running for this executive position?
Since I was a little girl I have always wanted to be an engineer. Once I got into high school I heard about SWE and so desperately wanted to get involved. I joined SWENext in high school and as soon as I got to the UW campus last year I was determined to find the SWE chapter here. I jumped at the opportunity to get involved and my desire to be a part of the Society of Women Engineers just grew. I always wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself and being a part of this community has allowed me to do just that.
I had the privilege of being the VP of Corporate Relations this past year and I have loved every moment. Corporate Relations opens the door to build that bridge between industry and the membership here at UW. I have been able to see how impactful the job is and I am simply not ready to move on. This year I am running again because I believe that this branch has the ability to become so much more involved and successful. I want to make the events more inclusive to all majors and disciplines within technology (College of Engineering and Paul Allen School). I want all of our engineers to read about the corporate events and know they have a place there and they are being accommodated for.
Corporate Relations has the responsibility of advocating for all of SWE’s members and I am here to bring them that by finding ways to incorporate events that bring all disciplines together in an effective manner. I am running for this position because I believe that I can build the trust with industry that will draw them to us and want to get involved with our membership.
What is your past involvement with SWE at UW?
When I first joined SWE, I joined as a committee member in Community Outreach for the virtual contents team. There I got to work with a group of wonderful people to run an instagram and a tiktok solely for the schools that we did outreach for.
At the end of last school year I applied to be VP of Corporate Relations and had the opportunity to serve in that role over the last year. I have been extremely humbled by the experience as I have realized how I get to take part in something so much larger than myself. As VP, I was able to learn under some incredible leaders, faculty and membership alike, and have learned so much about what leadership looks like. At the beginning of the year there were some difficulties that hit our chapter coming from the sponsorship side but I was able to learn so much about perseverance in that. I set out to find a solution to every issue that came our way. Giving up was simply not an option. Because of hardships, we decided to take one of our events in a different direction this year and I believe that it will become a huge success.
I had the most amazing experience running a team of diligent, hard working directors. We were able to put on a few corporate events (w/ Blue Origin, Microsoft, and HDR), the Industry Mentorship program that is run through SWE and WE Rise, along with SWEHacks, which is our annual hackathon, and our new event SWEets with Industry that served as our main networking event this academic year. Through the hardships and difficulties, I believe that I was able to support and advocate for my team in an impactful way and we created a successful collection of events.