I convened the Penn ESE PhD Colloquium throughout 2014.
2014–16 | Founder and Advisor | SmartTrack |
The School District of Philadelphia was in a no-win situation: No textbooks, poor student outcomes, and funding cuts.
At Penn, our team of 4 developed, designed, and rolled out
a solution for managing inventory (e.g., textbooks, musical instruments, and computing
equipment) for large, low-income school districts such as the School District of
Philadelphia.
We won the Penn Public Policy Challenge ’15, and placed second in the National Fels
Policy Challenge ’15. Our work has been featured in Governing magazine and we were one of 9 (out of 300) teams accepted to EDSi accelerator at Penn.
2015–16 | VP of Education | Cornell Graduate Consulting Club |
Only 1 out of every 5 PhD graduates becomes a professor. Management consulting is a great outside option, as (in my experience) it is fun, dynamic, and impactful.
At Cornell, I created and curated a progression of 7 events to increase interest and improve interview success in the membership. I also put together and MC’ed a panel of Advanced Degree consultants who shared their experiences.
Finally, I led 6 pro-bono consultants over 3 months to devise a marketing plan for a local mobile tourism startup.
2014–15 | Co-chair | Penn Graduate Case Competition |
Pro-bono consulting, and in particular the annual case competition, are ingrained parts of the PhD experience at Penn.
I organized the logistics, client selection, case creation, and sponsorship with my 5-member team
and MC’ed the event.
We out-raised our maximum cost projections by 110% and increased diversity of internal and
external participants (with 9 sponsors and 5 schools represented). Furthermore, the winning proposal was implemented by the case client within 3 months.