I am passionate about understanding human connection, mainly regarding communication, both behaviorally and cognitively. I hope to generate research that will bring a greater amount of knowledge to the psychology community about how the brain functions.
Personal Skills: Leadership, Organization, Creative Thinking, Design, Positive outlook, Creates a Positive Environment, High Standards, and Strong Work Ethic.
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Venture Project One – Fall Quarter 2019
Team: Johanna Grief, Adele Houston, Jono Warren, Zosia Sherwood.
The prompt was for us to create an inclusive and new game. My team thought this was a really fun project to work together on and we worked wonderfully as a group!
We created a game called Lickety Split. The games beachhead customer is students who are new to Western, specifically who live in the dorms on campus, and RAs who need activities for residents. The game worked as follows: All the players play one round of would you rather (this separates the players into two groups), then each team is given a challenge such as playing Simon Says, then they start over and the people to that get to 10 points first win!
Goals: We wanted to create a game that would help new students make friends and could be used by the RA’s to help the new students as well. We thought our game was perfect for this because while you play you always have a new team!
Venture Project Two – Fall Quarter 2019
Team: Adele Houston, Marius Schmitt, Ella Schroth, Zosia Sherwood.
My team developed an app called You Review. We hoped to provide an online platform for college students to have full access to that would provide information for events and places around their new college town. This included reviews of all the information provided on the app. Students and businesses from town could also post events.
This project was a challenge for each team member but in the end, it came together well! I personally learned a lot about group work, leadership, patience, BICs, BMCs, business reports, how to design a 5-minute pitch, and understanding how important competitors are. The main idea about our product is that it’s “by students for students”; meaning that the reviews on the app are from students so you know it is a relevant review for you as another student.
Goals: We really wanted to make a platform that was built for students at WWU. Our beachhead customer being newer students but this can also be used by any student who wants knowledge on local events. We really wanted to bring students together, make sure small events could be found (especially if they are thrown by students – like a band), and create a supportive place for WWU students to go.
Venture Project One – Winter Quarter 2020
Team: Allie Bowe, Lacoya Reny, Zosia Sherwood, Soleia Weisenburger.
The prompt for this project started out confusing but overtime my team was able to understand and create a fantastic rebrand of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program. This took a lot of ideation (many hours) in order to find a name that we thought was a perfect fit along with a logo and tagline to match!
After ideation, a survey, and multiple pre & post interviews we chose to rename the Entrepreneurship and Innovation program, Aspire. We picked this name because of its definition; to “direct one’s hopes or ambitions toward achieving something”. My team designed the logo as a lightbulb to represent that we will hold onto the old IDEA institute within the previous students and to show that we are growing from the old institute we show flowers growing out of the lightbulb. The tagline we developed was “radical innovation through collaboration”.
Goals: My team really wanted to make sure to include what the institute represented before it was closed because this still means a lot to the past students and the instructors. I personally believe that we should not forget our past but learn from it. We also wanted to make something that was refreshing and that would draw in students from all sorts of majors.
Venture Project Two – Winter Quarter 2020
Team: Tori Corkum, Evarosa Perry, Zosia Sherwood, Drew Vidano.
Our team worked with a company called Thrifty as business consultants. Thrifty hopes to bring a sense of freedom for all body sizes and all ethnicities. This company also hopes to stay updated in fashion in order to hold fun events for the local Bellingham community.
In the beginning, we ideated and thought we should help Levi (the owner of Thrifty) create a spring fashion show. After we met with Levi we realized that we needed to pivot out thinking and should focus more on the basics such as a BMC. The reason for this was that Thrifty was a brand new company and really needed help getting the groundwork established.
From there we found two main ideas that needed to be addressed: the relationships between Levi and the models and Levi and the artists. We began by developing contracts for Levi as examples for what he should expect from the volunteers and what the volunteers expect from him as the company owner. After doing all the research and development we had the biggest pivot of this project. It happened the day before we did our practice pitch but it was best for the team’s true end goal (simply to consult). We had been very focused on providing Levi with a product and forgot that our purpose was only to consult with him. In the end, our team’s pitch won the first round and did a great final pitch with the whole class!
This project taught me how to use a SWOT analysis, a PESTLE analysis, BMC, BIC, and a storyboard. These are important features in the entrepreneurship world. I personally also learned how to establish our team strengths and weaknesses; this was helpful when we needed to go through the process of storming and norming.
Goals: Our main goal for this VP2 project was to help Levi set up the groundwork in his professional relationships. We had a very big emphasis on professionalism and even suggested he take a class on the subject. We developed contracts that we sent directly to Levi and asked him to please work with a lawyer to ensure the contracts are legal and just.
Venture Project One – Spring Quarter 2020
Team: Jake Matson and Zosia Sherwood
For this project, Jake and I were asked to be creative coaches for the students doing the VP1 project. The prompt that the E1, E2, E4, and E6s had to follow was “recreate something to make it new and fresh. Take the same old same old physical product and reinvent it to add even more value to the customer.” This super simple prompt lead the VP1 teams to create some awesome new designs!
We had the pleasure of working with Team 1 and Team 4. Our main job was to ask open-ended questions and idea-generating questions in order to help the students create an awesome project. Something I learned as a coach was that our job was not to give them ideas, we are not consultants, but our job was meant more to help inspire them and show them that they had great ideas to expand upon. This was a bit of a challenge since we are part of the E&I community (Ideating is in our blood) but I think we progressively got better with every zoom meeting.
Jake and I got a well-rounded experience because we got to see what a very ‘on top of it’ and a more lax group looked like from the outside. Since we’ve each been part of groups like this before it really brought an emphasis to what our professors are seeing from us. Along with what should be the standard expectation of students in this class.
Overall, I think this was a great experience. Jake and I worked really hard to make sure our teams did the best they could (Team 4 won the pitch)! Our POA was really beneficial for keeping us organized, Teams was a great way to communicate with the other students in the class, Zoom was new and a great tool to have learned, and finally, we now have a base set of coaching skills that will be useful in multitudes of situations.