ANDREA ARGUETA

First Generation Business Leaders

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Personal importance of task 

The importance of my role as VP of Professional Development for FGBL are as follows. To begin with, before I started my positions I was worried that I would fail my team and myself but not being able to procure speakers to come to our meetings. I had a great sense of Imposter Syndrome, thinking that I was a fraud. Second, I was challenged to explore my comfort circle by networking with local professionals at networking events. It doesn't come easily to me to walk up to strangers and begin a conversation, especially when said strangers may have a say in your career opportunities. This experience pushed me to develop myself by leaving these spaces that I was comfortable with helping me develop soft skills. If not for this experience, I would have continued with unhealthy thoughts that my capabilities were not valued or enough.

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 Tasks accomplished 

• Coordinated and planned weekly meetings for a group of 15 - 20 members with support of an executive team of 9.

• Drafted speaker biographies to assist the VP of Publicity to help target new members.

• Attended networking events and built relationships with local professionals to expand the club’s network.

• Communicated with local professionals in the Greater Seattle area as they prepared to come in to one of meetings and chat with our members - discussed details concerning parking, attire, etc.

• Facilitated discussions twice per month during club meetings to engage students with speakers.  

• Assisted in the brainstorming and overall execution of our first annual End of Year Celebration where both our members and Foster community members could join us in finishing another year of college.  

Leadership competencies gained

Initiative: After a couple of months into my role as VP of Professional Development, I began to notice a shift in our engineering members. Compared to the beginning of the quarter, they seemed really excited for our speakers and continuously asked questions.  Now they didn’t seem as engaged and slightly distant from the presenters. I decided to dig a little deeper into the situation by asking certain members whom I believed would be honest with me about the situation. After listening to their feedback, I inquired about our initial survey again which had gathered information concerning the members the first languages, nationalities, and interests. Taking both these sources of information, I set out to look for speakers who worked at companies that would appeal to both business and engineering majors such as Boeing or Microsoft. Succeeding these changes, I noticed the engagement levels had shifted and I was happy to hear that our members felt more comfortable asking questions and could relate more to our speakers.

Other Perspectives: In order to be an effective leader for FGBL, I began to understand the importance of listening to our members' contributions when they provide feedback after our general meetings. In addition to this feedback, was the executive members and how they felt about our speakers. Due to these various pieces of feedback both from my team and members helped me revive the excitement our members had initially when the club started. Since the majority of our members were engineers they felt out of place being in a business club. After taking in their feedback, I curated speakers accordingly,  helping improving the member experience by connecting them with speakers that related more closely to them.

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Inclusion: As a part of the club’s mission, First Generation Business Leaders was a club that focused on community. As we began the initial discussions surrounding the values and efforts we wanted to focus on, we established that inclusion was top priority.  I especially believed this to be true in order to accomplish our goal of creating an environment by First-Generation students for First-Generation students where they could relax and connect with peers. When new members came to our meetings, I ensured to engage with them and brought them into the group so that they felt that they were welcomed and felt motivated to come back the following week.

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Facilitation: In my role, I was in charge of coordinating all the speaker meetings. One of my tasks included preparing questions for our speakers. It was crucial that during these meetings that I ensure that the audience felt welcomed to jump in and ask questions aside from the ones I had initially prepared. Also, I was responsible for ensuring that our speakers were keeping in mind time and gently persuading the conversation back to the group if it veered away from the interest of our members. Before this experience I had never had the opportunity to facilitate a group. In my role, I was able to learn how to engage and motivate others to go out of their comfort zones by asking questions and communicating their concerns.

Appropriate Interaction: My role depended heavily on my interaction with local professionals and in general representing my club in public events. I was very mindful when interacting with these individuals since my interaction would decide if they would continue to support our club by speaking at our general meetings. I was careful with my personal and online interactions, always ensuring I was conveying my excitement and respect for them and their time in either form. There was a specific time that I recall that I was so nervous that I had simply gone up to a professional and froze. He was kind and patient enough to ask me follow up questions and later on coming to one of our meetings yet, it was definitely one of my earlier remarks that I was able to learn from.

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Lessons Learned & Future Oriented Statement 

From practicing how to introduce myself and shake professionals hands, this experience helped me develop my professionalism skills both in person and online platforms. I began to practice the appropriate forms in which I should convey my idea in email format as well. Not only that, this experience helped me learn how to read a group and motivate others to ask questions or dig deeper into what a speaker was discussing. Overall, this role assisted me in helping me learn the tools needed to developing my relationship- building skills and motivates me to try new experiences even if I don’t feel fully prepared.