As the Professional Development Chair for IA this year, this was the first event I organized and I hope that everyone in IA was able to gain important information about Networking for the future from this event!
This past summer, I participated in this event through the Buckeye Leadership Fellows Summer Experience Series Program, where in addition to listening to this presentation, I also had to apply it by networking with OSU alumni. I made great connections to 3 alumni who were OSU alumni I connected with through different activities I am involved in across campus. They all had very different career paths that weren’t necessarily the ones I wanted to embark on but talking to them exposed to many new career options and fields that I could consider taking. In his presentation, Ryan discussed that networking isn’t just an immediate connection that will lead you to a job or an internship. Rather, the most important part of networking is to develop a mentorship-like relationship with individuals that can grow with you, provide mutual benefits, and last for a long time. This was definitely not how I saw networking as, so I thought that this information could be really helpful for IA members who want to create networks to benefit them in the future. So, I reached out to Ryan during the summer and scheduled this event so that IA members could gain this helpful advice and start using it at the beginning of the semester to begin their networks. Nearly 20 members came to attend the event live(and hopefully many others saw it online!) which I thought was a great turnout, especially for my first IA event!