Hello world!

Hello world! This past weekend I celebrated my birthday and as I’m approaching my mid-thirties I wanted to reflect on the past few years and how I’ve continued to work on achieving the two things that matter the most to me: having a growth mindset and cultivating connection.

Growth Mindset

It’s so easy to get caught up in the everyday stresses of your job and forget about taking care of your physical well-being. In 2021 I set a goal for myself to run 50 miles up and down the mountains in Squamish, BC as well as level up into a more senior role at Wish. I researched the physiological implications of pushing my body that far and created a training plan, waking up day in and day out at 5:30am to get in my runs before starting work. I also took on leading more impactful initiatives at Wish, the Rebrand campaign, that was its’ own endurance run of 6 months of back and forths with the agency, ensuring appropriate stakeholder feedback was communicated and implemented properly, creating a delivery schedule and managing a tracking sheet then distributing the final work internally.

The campaign ended up winning a Webby Award and garnered me a promotion in 2022, and the race was the hardest physical thing I’ve ever done. I had the realization in the middle that humans can really do anything they set out to achieve through the power of grit and perseverance, strategic planning, and adaptability in overcoming significant challenges. I finished in 12h 45mins.

Cultivating Connection

As the world transitioned into the Covid-19 pandemic, I found myself having to pivot my social well-being both personally and professionally. At Wish, I had to quickly shift my team from doing in-person productions and coworking sessions to virtual and initiated a judgment-free weekly brainstorming and pitching session. This combined with the team on-sites and workshops I planned over the 4 years I was there cultivated a deeper sense of team cohesion through the mutual ownership of goals and allowed us to hit our OKRs. 

In 2022 as we emerged from the pandemic I set the intention to continue growing my personal and professional social networks. I applied to and was accepted into the Lesbians Who Tech and Allies inaugural SQUAD Leadership program finding myself surrounded by a new group of intelligent, driven people across many different industries. In October I attended the LWT SF Summit Conference and got to partake in several leadership training workshops where I gained clarity on what I’m looking for in my next career move and the exact contributions and value adds I bring to orgs.

At the same time, I joined a queer soccer league and started showing up to queer events around my city throughout the summer. Some people are intimidated to show up to parties solo where they don’t know anyone but I challenged myself to step out of my comfort zone and have made so many amazing connections this year and expanded my friend group.