This week in ISM, a very special event was held. On October 6th, I participated in my first-ever Business Symposium. As this was my first time ever partaking in something of this sort, I was a little bit nervous before and at the beginning of the event, but I became more comfortable with it as time went on. I went on to interview three lovely people by the names of Stacy Graham, Travis McWaters, and Tiffany Carey. During these interviews, I gained an insight about fields that I probably won’t ever be a part of, but I still heeded their words of advice because they all emphasized one very important point - the field that they wanted to become a part of when they were in high school was not the field that they ended up in.
My first and most prominent interview was with Stacy Graham. Mrs. Graham is the President at Communications Fraud Control Association and the Director of Fraud Management and International Product at Inteliquent. Inteliquent, as she informed me, is a telecommunications company that provides voice and messaging services to wireless and cable providers and offers voice, toll free, messaging, and emergency services. The thing that I admired most about Mrs. Graham was that, despite being incredibly busy with her positions and ‘always working’ as she put it, she puts great emphasis on what she does with the little time outside of her job that she has. She loves to garden, something that my family used to do quite often, and enjoys growing flowers, fruits, and vegetables alike. Another thing she enjoys is sports - especially basketball - and was absolutely devastated by the effects of the coronavirus on college and professional sports, which is yet another thing she and I bonded over. Mrs. Graham was sweet, remarkably intelligent, and a wonderful woman with whom I feel very lucky to have connected with. She remained constant with two valuable lessons I’m glad to have learned from her. The first was to find things you enjoy outside of work that will allow you to relax when it all gets to be too much. The second and more prominent one was consistent throughout my interviews with all three professionals: when she was in highschool, she definitely didn’t want to be in telecommunication, but life took her on a different path and for that, she is grateful.
My second interview was with Travis McWaters of PEPSICO, an American multinational food, snack and beverage corporation for which he is, what he calls, a Cyber Threat Hunter. Regretfully, my interview with Mr. McWaters ended up being only 6 minutes long in contrast to the other 15 minute ones I got due to technical difficulties I experienced at the start. But our short 6 minutes together were well spent. He struck me as a very intelligent man with a passion for what he did. He told me about his love for computer science and how he was definitely a ‘geek’ in high school. His main assertion throughout our short interview was completely parallel with Mrs. Graham’s - he didn’t know he was going to be in cyber security growing up - the job concept didn’t even exist yet. I wish I had gotten to spend more time speaking with Mr. McWaters because I definitely believe he had a lot more wisdom to share, but I am grateful for our time during the Business Symposium.
The event ended strong with my final interview being with Tiffany Carey. She is the Director of Innovative learning and is actually in charge of virtual learning for all of FISD - a job in which she has faced tremendous amounts of pressure during this year. Mrs. Carey describes herself as a ‘doer’ and loves to get things done with a ‘sparkle’. She is a bubbly, obviously determined and smart woman. She taught me the method she uses to deal with stress called ‘circle of control’. She draws a circle and writes what she has control over in it, and whatever is inside the circle are things that she gets done with her signature sparkle. However, things that are outside of her circle of control (such as the detrimental effects of a global pandemic on education) are things she won’t stress out about until they enter her circle - if ever. We discussed how her job was effected for most of the interview, but when I asked her if she has always wanted a career in education, she made a face and told me she never would have imagined that she would end up in the position she’s in, perfectly corresponding with the responses from Mrs. Graham and Mr. McWaters.
The Business Symposium was an incredible experience. I truly feel as if I walked away from it with three times as much knowledge and wisdom that I had before the event commenced. It was a genuine pleasure to meet and converse with Stacy Graham, Travis McWaters, and Tiffany Carey and I feel lucky to have been given this unique opportunity. I found it incredibly interesting that none of them ended up doing what they thought they were going to do. It makes me wonder about my professional future - what will change between now and then? Will I end up in a career that’s even remotely similar to physical therapy, which is what I’m studying now? I have no idea, and there is absolutely no way of finding out in advance. And I’m okay with that - I will simply take the advice I was given during the Symposium and use the experiences I go through along my journey to become something great, regardless of the career.