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Beyond academic interests, throughout my career I have been passionate about community service and outreach. I have a strong drive for community service, organizations focused on supporting students in STEM, building and fostering social and academic support networks, and educating younger scientists and researchers to further acceptance in STEM.

This has included, and will continue to include:

Academic Outreach: I am strongly driven towards giving back to the community through sharing of knowledge. This has been done throughout my time in academia, such as being a South Side Science Festival exhibitor, a Chicago Public Schools outreach organizer, a collaborator in Physics with a Bang, a Soapbox Science volunteer, the Vice President of Women in Science at UChicago, and the Outreach Director of the Society of Women in Physics. All of these involve fostering deeper connections between underrepresented groups in STEM and research institutions through sharing scientific knowledge and progress, educating future young scientists, and encouraging parents of potential scientists. I was a Lead Facilitator of University of Chicago Undergrad Orientation, a 6 hour orientation event for incoming freshmen, guiding 80+ undergraduates through interactive workshops. I organized mock orals for first year Ph.D students preparing for their qualifying exams, helped in a workshop on car design for a University event called girls’ day in STEM, gave a talk and introduction to LaTeX to undergraduate organizations Women in Science and Women in Math, and co-led a Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation summer school for first and second year Cosmology students. By leading these events I hoped to help open the door for those less frequently given a chance to lead in STEM.

Leadership Initiative: I have also been devoted to helping run and maintain organizations closer to home, not just outreach. I was lucky to be elected and serve as Co-President, Peer Mentor, Interview Advisory Committee member, Admissions Interview Moderator, and Graduate Program Student Representative throughout my four years in the Ph.D. Program in Medical Physics. This involved planning the interview weekend of the program, organizing and moderating a student-only open Q&A panel for prospective students, leading weekly department Journal Club presentations, organizing multi-year peer-mentoring, mentoring NSF GRFP applicants, planning student-faculty socials and department-wide events, organizing department retreats focused on building community, and attending faculty meetings as the main contact between faculty and the student body. Further, I was elected and served as Webmaster, Medical Physics Representative, and Team lead of the grass-roots multi-division Graduate Recruitment Initiative Team focused on student outreach across STEM graduate programs. As a postdoctoral fellow I joined the Mount Sinai Science Policy Group as co-director of communications and outreach as I got more involved in science policy both in terms of policy to help STEM research, and STEM research applied to policy.

Community Service: Through my second and third year year in graduate school I was elected Medical Physics Representative on Dean’s Council and helped create, and serve as, the new position Division-wide Community Service Chair. In just the first year of the pandemic more than 25,000 meals were packaged and stored by graduate student volunteers I led at the Greater Chicago Food Depository. This continued to weekly local volunteering at the Hyde Park Food Pantry feeding hundreds of families every week until graduation.

While I hope this the length and breadth of the work written about here conveys how passionate I am about public service, more detail is available on my C.V. and I am always happy to speak about other leadership and volunteer experiences and opportunities.