🤔 Do you know your elevator pitch?  🌱 Whether you are actively networking to figure out your career direction, on the job search, or happily employed, you could use a good elevator pitch or self-introduction to continue building your career! 

🙋‍♀️ On Thursday, October 2, I held my second Leland workshop "Perfect Your Elevator Pitch" with a dozen virtual attendees. We identified the four essential parts of an elevator pitch/ self-introduction, drafted our own, and workshopped them. 

✍ An elevator pitch, for me, is at heart a short story about who you are, and it is the trickiest to transition between talking about what you're currently doing (which in many cases is specific and perhaps non-ideal) to what you want to be doing (more general, aspirational). So we addressed this situation if you are employed, unemployed, a current student, or pivoting fields. It was a lot of fun to delve into!

Here are a few glimpses of what I talked about, including my own elevator pitch. If you missed the event, the recording is on Leland+. Check it out here!

On September 16, I had the pleasure of speaking to a class of seniors at VIS@betterworld lab Experimental Education Institution in downtown Taipei. Under the guidance of my friend Rosalyn Shih, these students have been learning about life design, career planning, and applying to colleges internationally. 

To help them with their journey, I introduced some basic concepts behind networking to help them with exploring their career and making career decisions as they move into the adult world.

Networking is simply building relationships with partners and like-minded people who can help you achieve your vision. So to that end, we simulated meeting someone in a professional networking situation, learned about networking plans, identified people within our network that we could be building relationships with, and drafted self-introductions that we can use in any context. 

Very proud of these students who took the first step toward building relationships with others in the adult world. Thank you again to Rosalyn for inviting me!

Career Camp founder and facilitator Connie Ma shared an introduction to self-introductions in English for high school sophomore students at Bailing Senior High School. 

Connie shared the importance of making a good first impression through a handshake and self-introduction, and helped students learn how to compose a self-introduction and practice it with each other. 

Taipei American School offers summer internships to high school students through its Summer Academy. 

This year, interns also completed four Career Camp workshops throughout the four-week internship program to help them make the most of their internship experience. 

Career Camp founder and facilitator Connie Ma guided students through the process of completing an informational interview with someone at their internship, which they also presented on at the end of the internship to other students. 

Students also heard from three TAS alumni guest speakers about their first internship and how it helped them with their careers in software engineering, international relations, and journalism.