How I Grew

            Going through the Innovation Scholars program has been one of the best choices of my college career and I have learned an immense amount about myself, my goals, other cultures, and community building. This all started after meeting a wonderful professor Kathy Hajeb who helped push me out of my comfort zone and think outside of the box. The first course began with a great semester of working with other students to help each other figure out what they truly care about and what to do while in college to get where they ultimately want to be.

            Originally I developed my roadmap around my passion for food. My original passion purpose statement was, “I would like to find a better way to: Connect people to a more natural way of eating because I am passionate about nature and food and struggle to watch our current food system.” I have cared about the food industry from a young age, while it is still one of my passions I have realized what was the root of this passion. This plan to take nutritional courses and focus my extracurricular shifted after the first year. With my changed mindset learned in this course I realized that my passion for food was based on my passion for community. Food has a huge impact on the community in all cultures shown through my food in culture course as well as the impact food businesses have. Leading to the final wrap up course I decided to change my roadmap seeing that I did a wide variety of other activities organically around my new passion purpose statement. “I want to build stronger communities around brands in order to better connect businesses with people.”

            I have gone into great detail about the activities and courses that I have taken elsewhere but they are worth mentioning again because of the large impact that they had on me. The three chosen activities included participating and running the first outreach program for the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute, working as a volunteer coordinator for the University of Utah’s campus gardens, and creating and leading the programming for three Lassonde programs. While these are not the only things I did in college they were the bases of my college roadmap that will help me accomplish my goal of building communities for and within businesses.

            The courses that I took were all extra courses that I would likely have never taken and that would have been a tragedy. The most impactful course for me was conflict management with Jennifer Cummings. Cultural aspects of food taught me a great deal about myself and other people. Profiles in Entrepreneurship is the course that really helped broaden my horizon and got me on the path I am now of focusing on community. I couldn’t imagine going through college without these courses or these professors and will look back on them forever.

            While we only had to pick three extracurricular activities and three courses for this program I couldn’t stop there once I got started with this way of thinking and planning for my future. I worked for two important companies that were aligned with my goals as well as a two important student groups. I also was able to end my college career with a great course on Leadership taught by Dean Taylor Randall, Al Landon, and the many guest speakers.

            Profiles of Leadership was the final course that I took to finish off my degree and it was a great choice. Initially, I took it based on good reviews of content and ease of course. While the reviews were correct I did not expect to get so much out of the class. This course consisted of weekly guest speakers, quizzes on the Wall Street Journal, and fun banter between the Dean of the business school and the professor.

            Freshman year I needed a job and where better to look than the Lassonde Institute and their entrepreneurship community. After winning a competition Fetch Food came on my radar through the website, I reached out and met with the owner to see how I could get involved. This would be my first real job and one that I grew a ton from. I started out in outbound phone sales a very scary place for a shy 18 year old! After getting over my fear of the phone I started to connect with restaurants my true passion, which drove me into more of the account management side where I excelled. I also got the opportunity to hire and work with some great employees, triggering my passion for employee satisfaction. Unfortunately this fizzled out as many startups do but I was able to keep in contact with some great people and I learned a great deal from this first job.

            I was told to get involved by everyone at college orientation and so I did. At the first tabling event of their year where student clubs from all over campus go to pitch their program I found my first club. Walking through I was overwhelmed by all of the options and I stumbled upon a lonely girl with a tray of untouched brownies. After introducing myself she introduced me to ICE, individuals for conscientious eating. Knowing a little about veganism I was interested and put my name on the list. My girlfriend and I went to the first community dinner and were hooked. We weren’t and still aren’t vegan but had to get involved with such an awesome community. We spent the rest of the year planning and cooking for community dinners that brought people together for all over campus. This eventually led to my vegan sandwich job.

            My second important job was for Buds where I spent over a year and a half going from a sandwich maker to manager and creating the path and bringing others up with me along the way. This was my first long term taste of the ups and downs of the food industry and small family business. This ultimately helped me see that food was not the only place for me. I learned a great deal about leadership and working with tough bosses. I still meet regularly with the owners and see myself working with them on something in the future. Working in the service industry in this position gave me a better idea of what it takes to provide quality customer service and why employee satisfaction is so important in this case. This company did a great job of making happy employees, which helped buy in and create a strong culture that was expressed in the quality of food and service. I have taken a lot from this position that will work well with my passion and purpose.

            The University of Utah is not known for its strong community, rather for being a commuter campus. I did not understand the impact that had until my first year where I realized how small extracurricular from clubs to parties played a role in campus life. Only a small amount of people did anything outside of class and I, alongside Business Leaders Incorporated, wanted to change that. BLinc is focused on helping business school students get involved and ultimately successful careers from it. I was able to help them the last two years of my career at the David Eccles School of Business. While we didn’t change the campus or even the business school completely we helped create a handful of new clubs and increase membership over 200% in existing ones. I learned a great deal about community building and my own peers within the business school.

            Doing the required courses of my Bachelor’s of Science in Management degree while doing everything else that I cared about wasn’t easy but this program made it much easier to connect my passion and goals with the boring accounting courses and general education projects that I had to do. Thinking like an entrepreneur and focusing on my passions like this course taught me how to do I was able to relate everything I was doing back to my ultimate goal of wanting to build stronger communities around brands in order to better connect businesses with people.

            Not only did my regular course work relate to what I was doing with this program these activities themselves were related and often interconnected. Doing all of my things together amplified the experience. I was able to practice and relate a lot of the lessons I learned. My leadership practice was exponentially accelerated because of everything that I was learning in class, my jobs, and all of the extracurricular.

            The University of Utah does not have the greatest on campus community, yet I believe I made the most out of it in my four years. My first year I was scared at how little people got involved often being in attendance with a handful of people at events and even a couple times being the only person at a club meeting or workshop. I never gave up though, I didn’t want to be apart of the problem and sit out though. My four years were jam packed with clubs and organizations like ICE, fly fishing club, SHRM, Entrepreneur club, cycling club, ASUU- sustainability board, Bennion Center, Lassonde, AKPSI, BLinc, Edible Campus Gardens, and all of the random campus events that I attended. I hope that the University of Utah campus continues to grow and that the community strengthens.

            Coming to Salt Lake City, Utah after living in the same home in Reno, Nevada my whole life was a big leap for me but it sure has paid off. Everyone thought I was crazy for going to Utah, but I have grown to love this quirky state and have no plans of leaving soon. This has been a great place to go to school, spend time outdoors, and get involved in the business community.

            Getting involved in the Salt Lake entrepreneurship community has been a great way to get to know more people in the community outside of the campus I will be leaving soon. Attending events put on by Church and State, Sustainable Startups, the Leonardo, and Labeled Film Festival was a great way of seeing how hard the community is working on the same goal as I am and I look forward to joining them. I plan to stay involved with this community and continue to explore other opportunities in our great downtown area in order to continue my education.

            While I learned a great deal of facts and theories within the business school and the courses I took I learned the most about myself. This program helped open many doors and ways of looking at the world for me and I am forever grateful for taking and following through with the program. I may still be shy but I have opened up a great deal and continue to work on it everyday. I went from a bossy manager to an encouraging leader. And I developed many other soft and hard skills by stepping out of my comfort zone and working on my passion for community and business.

            The next step for me is to gain more professional experience and hard skills in the marketing and business space. I see myself trying out many different careers and I am excited to begin that career at Maverik focused on events and sponsorship. Through this I will be able to work for an awesome company with a unique community and strong brand among their competitors. I am looking forward to helping create and execute on many exciting and innovative events this summer. We will be sponsoring and attending community events all over the mountain west, visiting outlier stores and showing employee appreciation, and giving out awesome gifts to customers and employees.

            For me as I type this the ultimate goal for me is being a marketing and/or events leader for a company with a struggling brand where I get to revive and create their new brand image. I am inspired by solving hard problems and working with new teams. I would love to take on a problem like this. Who knows where this will take me but as long as it is related to my passion of community building I will be happy.

            This is only the beginning of my journey to build stronger communities around brands in order to better connect businesses with people and I am excited to see where I go. If you would like to join me or have any ideas on where I should go next please reach out.