Hello! My name is Erin, and I am a rising junior at WashU majoring in Accounting.

This summer, I have the opportunity of working at WEPOWER, a St. Louis based nonprofit that “activate[s] community power to re-design education, economic, health, and justice systems to be just and equitable for all.” WEPOWER focuses on engaging and empowering Black and Latinx communities in St. Louis through programs such as the Power Building Academy, Tomorrow Builders Fellowship, and Chisholm’s Chair.

Another one of WEPOWER’s programs is the Elevate/Elevar Accelerator, a 6-month accelerator that supports Black and Latinx founders of startup companies. Since March, WEPOWER has been working with ten entrepreneurs and their businesses by providing them with an investment-readiness curriculum, advising from business coaches and mentors, and access to professional services. Most of my work this summer has been helping to build a virtual pitch event that Elevate/Elevar will culminate in at the end of August. During this event, entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to pitch their businesses to sponsors, investors, and community members.

Working on this project has taught me a lot of things. The past six weeks have been but a small glimpse into the immense amount of work, thought, and coordination that goes into running a startup, the continuous growing pains involved in the realization that you truly don’t know what you don’t know, and the joy of celebrating each victory, no matter how big or small, with and within your community, each other, and yourself. I’ve also learned a more personal lesson about my working style— a topic that I’m thankful to a fellow Skandalaris intern and our program director for bringing up in our last group discussion. 

Though perhaps cliché, “detail-oriented” is my go-to adjective for whenever I’m asked about my strengths in a job setting. It’s also my answer to questions about my weaknesses. Never have I felt this to be so true as during this summer.

Planning for the Elevate/Elevar pitch event involved much research— from interviewing people with experience in producing virtual events, attending online webinars and pitch competitions, and sifting through multitudes of available streaming platforms. Needless to say, it didn’t take me long to drown in the details. In the first week of research, stubborn tunnel-vision guided me down to the granular depths of every public gala event I could find on YouTube (which thoroughly flooded my recommendations for weeks), platform reviews on community forums, and combination tree diagrams of potential event configurations. 

I arrived at our team debrief the following week with my head swimming in information from here and there and who-knows-where-else— decidedly more than I knew how to use. As the discussion went on, I found my thoughts drifting more to when I’d have a chance to share the information I had so determinedly foraged from the world wide web rather than focusing on our meeting: What is the purpose of our event? What are the priorities in engaging our audience? Who and what is this event for? How does it fit into the broader goals of Elevate/Elevar and WEPOWER’s mission? What parts of my research are actually helpful? 

It took time to realize that I had been so invested in my given tasks that I had lost sight of these questions. It wasn’t enough that information was compiled, I had to translate them into meaningful language in the context of our broader goals. I had fallen into this trap before, but where transparency, communication, and coordination are key in an operation like WEPOWER’s, it was clearer than ever. 

Since that meeting, I made an effort to remember how each task contributes to a certain goal. This has made it easier to work more efficiently, intentionally, and collaboratively. Going forward, I hope to work in meaningful and focused ways by thinking critically about the people and parts that make a whole.