Vannysa Saechao, a senior at high school and a director at STEMpathize, loves taking on a leadership role and organizing outreach efforts.
Vannysa Saechao, the Outreach Director, has developed invaluable time management and organizational skills while navigating her role at STEMpathize.
Saechao contributes to the organization by offering STEM opportunities to elementary, middle school, and high school students through mass promotional emails. She also manages a team of interns, leads meetings, and gives daily updates. One of the main benefits of her position is that it is fun; she truly enjoys interacting with others and helping them learn about the wide realm of opportunities available to them.
“I really like connecting with others to teach them about STEM,” Saechao said.”[I] like helping others learn about the resources that are available to them, and I also like empowering youth [by helping them] discover what STEM is and how fun it actually can be.”
Working at STEMpathize has not only been enjoyable for her, it has also been an educational experience. Through the process of becoming an intern, and then a director, Saechao has had to contend with her promotional tasks, schoolwork, and personal life. She was forced to come up with an efficient organizational system to handle the influx of assignments, and found that her efforts to organize STEMpathize tasks also resulted in increased efficiency at school.
“I heavily rely on Google Calendar to block out my tasks, and I also schedule in specific times to take breaks and let myself rest. I think [organization] is super important, and [it’s] the reason why I'm able to work productively,” she explained. “My time management has gotten a lot better.”
Her experience at STEMpathize has also affected her positively in other ways. After becoming a director and getting a taste of the challenges and benefits of being in a leadership role, Vannysa has discovered more about herself.
“It's taught me a lot about how I like working in teams,” she observed. “As an intern, for one of our projects, we had to make a resource hub, and we had to meet up outside of the outreach meetings. It was really fun getting to know everyone and also working together.”
This organization has had a meaningful impact on Saechao in numerous ways, and she thinks that it would be a great experience for others as well; they would get the opportunity to learn technical skills, such as using Slack, as well as the real-world experience of working in a job before actually venturing out into the workplace.
“I've learned a lot of different promotional strategies, which have helped me with initiatives outside of STEMpathize as well,” she explained. “Small things like how to create a more engaging email, or the importance of following up when you email, or different promotional strategies – like reaching out to local organizations to promote your behalf and utilizing your networks.”
Saechao has had an amazing experience so far, and has learned many important lessons and crucial skills that she carries to multiple aspects of her life. Once being a new intern herself, she hopes that current interns will recognize the importance of being comfortable with asking for help.
“I could see how [working] could be daunting for interns, and I want to be better at like supporting them [and making sure they’re] not feeling overwhelmed and feeling open to talk to me if they have any issues, or if they need to communicate anything with me,” Saechao stated.
Saechao had some challenges while dealing with time management when she was a newly appointed director, and stresses the importance of being organized. Through trial and error, she established a calendar and task management system to complete her work on time. She spent a lot of time honing her time-management strategies. Her advice to future directors is to learn from her experiences and adapt to difficult situations, and also to reach out to others for help and support.
“In the beginning, I had so many questions about many little things. Do I highlight this specific block of text? Am I doing this right?” she said. “STEMpathize is a place where you're able to ask those kinds of questions. No one is going to look down on you for asking a million questions on how to do things. This doesn't only apply to the outreach team, but to the other teams as well. The directors are all such welcoming and collaborative people. Don't be afraid to ask other people questions and send updates to them.”
Saechao plans to go to college in the future, and is exploring careers relating to her interests, including fields that involve outreach. She is considering majoring in business management. In the future, she will use her time management system to aid her in her efforts to be successful in college and beyond. The skills she has honed while at STEMpathize – including leadership, organization, and communication – will help her reach her goals in the future.
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