Stories
Taking Initiative
When I was working as an activities organizer for Catholic Charities, one week during a youth program got completely derailed by a relentless, torrential downpour. Every outdoor activity on the schedule was suddenly off the table, and 200+ soaked kids were crammed into a multipurpose room. Spirits were low, the noise was building, and there wasn’t any clear backup plan.
Instead of waiting for direction, I stepped in and suggested we flip the situation on its head. I’d done improv and acting before, so I proposed turning the room into an impromptu improv theater. I pulled a few staff in as "cast members," had the kids shout out prompts, and built quick scenes around their ideas. What started as a mess turned into a shared performance. The once anxious kids were now laughing, fully engaged, and distracted from the chaos until the storm passed.
Solving a Business Problem
At my snack start-up, Chipper’s L’Frittes, I started with dark chocolate-covered potato chips. People liked them, but when I sat down with my notebook and basic cost sheet, the numbers did not. Margins were thin, packaging was wasteful, and it was clear the product would not scale past a small side hustle. My goal became simple: keep the idea of a snack that felt special, but turn it into something people would buy regularly and that actually made money.
I talked with customers and heard the same thing more than once: they wanted something that felt healthier. I tested radish and cauliflower chips, tracked cost per bag, and compared waste and sales to the original version. The pivot cut costs by about ten percent, reduced packaging inefficiencies by roughly twenty percent, and drew in more repeat buyers. The experience taught me that listening, testing, and being willing to change course matter more than being attached to the first idea.
Leadership
While I was a Senior Analyst for the WashU Student Investment Fund's healthcare team, my group decided to pitch Merck, a pharmaceutical company. In order to create an adequate pitch that would result in the fund's purchase of Merck stock, we needed three well-thought-out theses. However, our initial draft was marked by a lack of depth and coherence.
To combat our scattered train of thought, I suggested that we each focus on one component for the pitch: pipeline, valuation, and I took the financial statements. I constructed revenue and margin trends and kept a running list of questions in the comments of the sheet. When the numbers from the valuation and my work showed inconsistency, I set up a meeting in a study room. We pulled the model up, went line by line, and changed assumptions only when we could point to a filing or make a call.
When it came time to present, our theses worked well together and emphasized a strong case for a buy position, which ultimately led the fund to vote in favor of purchasing Merck shares. That experience made me see leadership less as being the loudest voice and more as giving the group a structure, doing careful work, and helping everyone reach one shared view.
Teamwork
In my management class at WashU, my team was tasked with a consulting project for Gateway X, a firm that backs AI marketing founders using something called “seedstrapping.” Specifically, we were tasked with helping the company to get the word out about their new seedstrapping initiative and make them increase their brand recognition.
There were five of us, all juggling exams, clubs, and busy schedules, so we met each week at a set time in the Olin atrium and used a shared calendar to trade tasks when someone had a hard week. In our meetings, we divided the work into practical chunks that we could each reasonably handle. We broke up the work into 5 segments to create a competent pitch: introduction/purpose, press release considerations, advertisement strategy, website landing page design, and financials.
In the end, because we had done well to distribute case work and adequately collaborated, we produced a three-part plan that received the maximum amount of points. This experience showed me how structured collaboration and clear ownership can turn a complex, time-crunched project into a high-impact, professional-quality result.
