For the past year, six Braven Post-Accelerator Fellows from San Jose State University (SJSU) and Rutgers-Newark (RU-N) served on the Design Advisory Board to help the Braven team continually improve programming. Each Design Advisor took on a new project each month and the entire Board came together virtually once a month to discuss their findings. A few Braven Design Advisors reflect on their experience below.
Explain one project you completed for the Design Advisory Board. How did it impact you and how did it impact Braven?
Matthew Seah: One project I worked on was compiling the online resume bank for Fellows. In this project, I took a look at a large list of Fellows’ resumes and narrowed down the list until we had a succinct list of exemplary resumes. For fellows, this allowed them to craft a better resume so they can be one step closer to landing those high profile interviews. For myself, this allowed me to better tweak my own resume by recognizing what works well but what doesn’t.
Daniel Kelley: The first project I completed was creating a survey and interviewing Fellows about their proficiency in financial literacy and desire to become more financially fluent. It impacted me because it helped build my confidence when putting together a survey or research tool, market it to gain participants, and analyze the results to present to my team of advisors. It impacted Braven by showing the team how Post-Accelerator Fellows think about their financial futures and helps Braven decide what programming to include on financial literacy.
How will your experience as a Design Advisor help you in your desired career field?
Dyllan Brown-Bramble: The projects I have worked on as a Design Advisor have helped me to improve my observational, analytical, and feedback-giving skills. These skills will be extremely useful to me as I enter law school and then transition into my career.
Dylan Dutt: My experience as a Design Advisor has impacted my personal development tremendously. Coordinating weekly monthly meetings with our team from all over the country can definitely be a challenge when the meeting is virtual. This provided me with the structure of conference calls and the importance of punctuality, being respectful to others’ opinions and having norms to ensure the meeting runs smoothly. I will be graduating and receiving my degree in Electrical Engineering, which requires a lot of teamwork and coordination. At my current internship as a Systems Engineer at Siemens, I am continually using the skills I have learned as a Design Advisor when working with various companies and stakeholders.
Daniel: My experience as a Design Advisor has helped me learn how to better conduct research. I had to reach out to users for interviews, observe Fellows in the Accelerator, and report back what I learned. This helped me develop skills that are transferable to the field I want to go into which is user experience research.
What was it like being on a Board with Braven Fellows on the other side of the country?
Dyllan: It was a really great experience working with people on the other side of the country. Since I finished the Braven Accelerator, I have been saying that there should be ways to connect with people at other campuses. It has been great to be able to connect with people who have gone through the same Braven experience but are so far away. I love that the Braven community feels a little more connected and I hope for more opportunities to engage with SJSU and NLU (National Louis University) Braven family members in the future.
Design Advisors:
