About Me: I am a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania native. My major is Finance/Accounting. Currently, I am involved at ODU in Honors College, Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society, the ODU Finance Club, and NABA ODU Chapter. My career goals are to obtain my Certified Public Accountant Licensure and pass the exam to become a Chartered Financial Analyst. I hope to pursue a Master's and Doctorate degree in Accounting. I also aspire to be a self-employed businesswoman & #1 best-selling author. I knew that I would be a good fit for this program because I am dedicated and committed to anything that I am involved in and I am certain to give my 100% effort. I was interested in the Innovate Monarchs Program because I know that I would be a great addition to the team; I am a young black woman always looking for opportunities to excel/advance the black community.

Innovate Monarchs Experience: As in every serious project, good research is required, in order to set its foundation. And all good research, requires empathy. To empathize with our “audience” we used various pathways, including active listening of the ideas of the whole innovate monarchs’ team, as well as the ones of the faculty side of the event. We distributed a university wide survey, which was short and to the point, that was posted for 3 “busy” days at the University Announcements (Thursday-Saturday), for both faculty and students. Responses were then curated and furtherly analyzed by our team, to help as add the very much needed first layer of the foundation of our research and prototype. Major themes that arose during the Design Thinking Process were: ADVOCACY for students' voices to be heard. FINETUNING resources/tools at ODU (e.g., Monarch Groups, announcements, etc.). PUBLICITY concerns for underrepresented minorities groups/communities at ODU.

INCLUSIVITY & COMMUNICATION problems that affect African American and Latinx students. CULTURAL DIVERSITY issues affecting faculty and staff at ODU. Our research involved understanding how the empathy process can assist students by carrying out surveys. The student survey revolved around diversity and inclusion at ODU. The data analysis of the survey helped us define the challenges that African American and Latinx students face at ODU with reference to student success. We found that many students had problems with finding resources which affected their preparation for student success at ODU. Our team formulated 33 different outside-the-box ideas to solve the problem. We used the Brainstorming-Group-Prioritize model to narrow down our ideas to one project for our Prototype. We looked for mutually beneficial ideas throughout the ideation process to build an event that would be able to align with our team’s mindset. This helped us to birth the concept for “THESource Fair” with the Summer Success program as our solution to the problem for ODU Students. In order to develop our Prototype, we used the INNOVATE Concept map to build our prototype around the question of how might we promote the resources available on ODU campus and in the Hampton Roads community especially resources catered to specialize in the needs of African American and Latinx students. Check out our idea of ODU's First "ONE-STOP" #THESourceFair where students can get information on all the resources available on ODU campus and in the Hampton Roads community especially resources catered to specialize in the needs of African American and Latinx students.

Please feel free to check out The Constant Team's pitch website by clicking the link below!: https://sites.google.com/d/1lVMoicAyv4G_J1BOISh7kOVgk3mmjNyw/p/1zZLVGkpb8ymvnUOKHYnb0JBN9RuHxoP8/edit

MINDSETS OF A HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGNER: The mindsets during this program are: Innovation is for Everyone, Know Your Why, Show & Tell, Radical Collaboration, Empathetic & Human-Centered, Embrace Ambiguity, and Iterate, Iterate, Iterate. My team and I practiced all 7 of these mindsets and I would like to touch on how we did so. So, we realized that each individual on our team is valuable and brings something good to the table. We all took the time to learn from one another and invest in each other. My why for being in this program was because I myself identify in the black community and I felt the need to voice for other people of the black community who feel that they have a hard time locating resources on campus. We created an idea that we were very passionate about and we knew that when it came time to 'show and tell,' our prototype would do very WELL! The thought behind our idea was major and well-planned/put together. Collaborating together with people from different backgrounds, majors, and ethnicities was essential to our team success and how we developed our idea. We each had the opportunity to share insight on what we felt and our perspective on things and our idea would not be as great, diversified, and unbias as much as it is if it weren't for the diversity and inclusion in my team. We all were able to empathize for one another and respect each other's opinions on different topics throughout the meetings in the semester. Instead of jumping to conclusions on what the problem really was, we took some time to peel back some layers to get to the root cause of the issue that the Latinx and black community faces here at Old Dominion University. We did not allow ourselves to have a close mind and rush to get a result or a desired outcome, we took the time and remained patient in deciding the direction that we wanted to go with this project.

APPLYING INNOVATE EXPERIENCES IN THE FUTURE: This program allowed for me to learn and grow from the true unique experiences of collaboration on team projects. It helped me become more aware of the importance of diversity in the workplace and how much it effects outcomes. We were able to dig deeper into this challenge without a bias mindset. The skills that I have gained during this endeavor in the Innovate Monarchs Program are: team building, listening, and learning how to allow others to lead. It is very few that I allow other people to lead me out of fear that someone may lead me wrong or may not do as well as I can do, yet I am learning that being a good leader requires you to be led sometimes as well. I am very excited to know that I have improved in my ability to work as a team and this experience helped me with not being so afraid of failure in group projects.