Jillian Kemper is a 4th-year Business Scholar and President of the Undergraduate Business Women’s Association who shared her knowledge on how to use LinkedIn effectively. As a Business major, she has used LinkedIn to build connections with Ohio State alumni and find internships and job opportunities for the future and it was helpful to hear from her on how I can use LinkedIn effectively. I have had a LinkedIn account for a year now and while I have learned a lot about how to set up my account and have used LinkedIn to build meaningful connections with alumni from IA Scholars, OSU, and other organizational involvements, it was nice to hear about ways I can improve my account. One thing that Jillian mentioned which really stuck out to me was to not focus on getting to the 500+ connections mark on LinkedIn, which is something that I had become fixated on, and rather cultivating your connections carefully and meaningfully because that milestone would gradually come in the future anyway. Whenever I now send or receive LinkedIn connections, I am more cognizant of building a network for the future and ensuring that those I am connecting with are those with who I can actually connect with.

A Professional Development event I organized this semester was another alumni spotlight featuring Greg Zane, an IA alum who graduated from Ohio State in 2018 and now works as an epidemiologist for the Washington State Department of Health. I found out about Greg from another IA alum who came to a community meeting last semester and encouraged me and Steven to reach out to him. I did not have his contact information, but I sent him a cold LinkedIn message and he responded to me with great excitement about coming back to IA and sharing his experiences after graduation! I have had a lot of interaction with IA alumni this year and they have all been very eager to come back to the program and share their experiences, which really has helped me see how involved IA alumni have been with the program and how this program really builds lifelong connections!

Greg studied Public Health as an undergrad and after graduation, he obtained his MPH from the University of Washington in 2020, and now works as an epidemiologist, which is a career path that has become increasingly relevant, since we are living in a pandemic! Although Greg’s epidemiology interests revolve around female reproductive health and disparities in developing nations, he has currently been working as a Lead Outbreak Systems and Notify Epidemiologist where he has coordinated COVID-19 case investigations, contact tracing policies and is also working to develop an online database for tracking COVID cases in Washington and nationwide. Along with learning about a new career path that is very relevant to International Affairs, I was also able to learn more directly about the COVID pandemic from a public health expert! Greg offered his knowledge on vaccination and how the Washington State Department of Health has been working to increase public awareness in social distancing measures and now encourage vaccination among the public.

Another event I organized this semester was an Interviewing Workshop that was led by Ryan Wilhelm from the office of Career Counseling and Support Services(CCSS). Ryan also led a workshop on Networking for IA last semester, so it has been great to build a connection with him and the office of CCSS to host Professional Development events for IA that will help IA members learn Professional Development basics and also become aware of external resources on campus that can help them achieve their Professional Development goals. Ryan discussed all the aspects of how to best present yourself in an interview, which included dressing professionally, zoom interview etiquette(which is increasingly relevant), and what to expect in an interview. One of his points that really stuck out to me was the idea of a staircase approach, which is the idea that you start an interview describing how your specific life experiences and traits have led you to pursue the role you are interviewing for and how your current and future experiences will help you climb up each step on the staircase to reach your professional goals. This approach can be used as you further along each interview question to ensure that they all have a larger connection to your main message. This was a new approach to interviewing that I had not heard before, so I look forward to applying this idea the next time I have an interview for a position.

The very first event I organized for the Spring 2021 semester as the Professional Development Chair was an Alumni Spotlight featuring Elena Akers, who is an IA Alum that graduated in 2020, received the Fulbright to go to Germany and is working as an intern for START, which is the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland and is researching domestic radicalization in the United States through this internship. She shared her experiences about the work she is doing at her remote internship at START, her process of applying to competitive fellowships such as the Fulbright, and looking for internships, especially virtual internships, such as the one she has with START. Her work studying domestic radicalization was incredibly fascinating as she shared a database that START has created to track activities of the radical groups and the demographics and locations of radicals who are posing a danger to society today. Tracking this data is also incredibly relevant today with the rise of white supremacist activity and hate crimes that came with the storming of the US Capital and the hate crimes committed against the Asian-American community in Atlanta and nationwide, which are all rooted in notions of white supremacy and radical activity. Elena also shared the process of applying to remote internships and how to develop interpersonal connections from remote internships that an intern would normally develop during an in-person internship. It was great to hear her advice on being focused and taking time to connect with people through the opportunities you come across, whether it is going to online office hours for your classes or taking the initiative to schedule zoom meetings with people you may have met through internships or at Ohio State in any capacity that you are inspired by and want to learn more from.

One of the things I wanted to do as the IA Professional Development Chair was increase engagement with IA Alumni and current members so current members could learn from alumni and maybe even gain mentorship and build personal relationships with alumni they may share a lot in common with. Through organizing this alumni panel, I hope that current IA members were able to learn from the experiences of past alumni who have all accomplished various amazing things across many different fields. I organized this by chance mostly, though sending a Google Form in the IA Facebook Group and hoping that alumni would respond and be interested in sharing their experiences with IA members. Luckily, I got four wonderful IA alumni to commit to having a panel discussion, who were by chance all pursuing very different things after graduation, so this event could appeal to many different members with different majors and career plans in mind.

The panelists were Sam Harris who is a student at Harvard Law School, Alex Northrop who is a student at Columbia Medical School, Courtney Johnson, who works for the Department of Homeland Security as a Communications Specialist and Brandon Hofacker, who recently works for the Elizabeth Dole Foundation as an Executive Assistant. Since I was leading the panel discussion, I created the questions I would ask the panelists and sent them the questions weeks before, so they’d have time to prepare their answers. My questions focused on how the panelists were involved in OSU and how their involvements and experiences shaped their future career plans. For example, Courtney learned Hindi at OSU and got the Boren Scholarship, which is a Critical Language Scholarship for those studying languages who want to work for the government. Through the Boren Scholarship, Courtney got a Communications internship with the Department of Homeland Security, from which she got her current job. Similarly, Alex studied abroad in South America for a year after graduating from Ohio State, where he studied infectious diseases, and that further inspired him to attend medical school.

All of our panelists were very involved in areas of their interest at Ohio State and their involvements greatly inspired their career paths. From them, I learned that I should try to get involved in my interests as soon as I can to determine my career path, which I am certainly doing as a second-year. I hope many of the first-years who attended the panel also gained inspiration and ideas from the involvements of our alumni panelists that they may want to pursue themselves to either successfully pursue the career goals that they may already have in mind or get a better idea of what their future interests might be if they haven’t decided yet. With the pandemic and everything being online, it is certainly a lot harder for first-years to feel engaged on campus, especially when many of them might not even be on campus, but I hope that they can feel more engaged with the IA community through such events and get a better idea of how they can be engaged in the future!

This was an event I attended for my STEP PDP requirements, but I think that it will also be relevant to IA and my role as a Professional Development Chair on the IA LC.

In this session, I learned about the process of interviewing and what steps I can take to give the best interview. I learned that there are 4 types of questions companies and organizations ask during an interview. Interviewers ask technical questions which relate to the skill of the job you are applying for, personal questions, questions about future goals, and questions about your past experiences, all of which tell the company if you are qualified for the job you are seeking skill-wise and if you would be a good fit for the company you are applying for. I learned how to word my answers to interview questions, how to create answers if I don’t have a specific one in mind, and just gain more perspective of what the employer is looking for in an interview.

Interviewing is a very important skill to have for both when you are in college and after college when you may be attending graduate school or seeking a job. In college, I have already given multiple interviews when I applied to student organizations, applied for leadership positions in student organizations I was already in, and when I sought internships and research opportunities. I am applying to student organizations that require me to interview in the future as well, so I hope I will be able to apply what I learned at this workshop there. After college, I want to attend graduate school, where I will likely need to interview for the programs I am applying to so that universities can see if I am a good fit for the program. I’m certain that I can apply what I have learned in this workshop to future interviews not only in college but for the rest of my life.

As the Professional Development Chair, I would love to incorporate more events relating to interviewing, so I think that I will reach out to CCSS for organizing another event or try to host an interviewing workshop on my own!

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!