I took this elective course in Winter 2021. We examined a host of topics about Asian Americans, from discussing the Model Minority Myth to media representation and political gerrymandering. This class was on Zoom so I don't have as many artifacts to share but my group was able to perform a skit remotely (see below). I was surprised to see so many non-Asian Americans in my class and got to engage in a lot of really great discussions about race, inclusion, and society in this course. 

Inclusion: As I mentioned, there were a lot of non-Asians in my class so getting to engage in conversation with them and share my own experiences really helped all of us in the class learn from each other. Being inclusive of different Asian ethnicities was also something I got to work with in this class as I grew up in a predominantly Chinese-American area, so getting to learn the histories of other Asian ethnicities was really eye-opening. This class was a very healthy and safe environment to have racial disucssions.

Systems Thinking: A lot of the injustices facing Asian Americans right now are systemic. Getting to examine different systemic issues and how each ethnic group ties into the others was really interesting and helped educate me more on others' experiences but also how to view my own American-ness. 

Social Justice: Through the discussions in this class and learning more about the struggles of other Asian ethnicities and people from different backgrounds than me, I feel more equipped to have intelligent and informed conversations about race and how my own Asian identities fit into a larger picture of representation in the US.  

This was a Marketing elective I took in Winter 2024. This course is about the business aspect of product management and how to create a product that best fulfills both business and customer needs. I also used this class as a part of my Foster Honors program requirements by completing an ad-hoc project of a 25-page research paper on inclusive product management. 

Inclusion: Through my 25-page paper, I researched various strategies to be an inclusive product manager, or how to design products that are as accessible and inclusive as possible. I interviewed 7 different product management professionals about their experiences and synthesized my findings with industry research to develop best practices, different barriers, and how to overcome these barriers and be an inclusive product manager. I learned a lot about different types of inclusion, accessibility, and design types that I hadn't been exposed to previously.

Research/Synthesis: This paper involved 3 months of deep research and synthesis in compiling the different interview notes and drawing connections between what each product manager said and what the industry know-how said. I managed to condense all of these findings into different sections of barriers and mitigations. You can read the paper below.

Problem-Solving: Aside from my paper, I also had to engage in a lot of strategic problem-solving for class assignments. These problems could be business problems like "How does UberEats expand their market share" or customer problems like "How can someone improve their experience with When2Meet?" I had to engage in "solutions-agnostic" problem solving to develop product strategies that were intended to solve problems without identifying the solution immediately, instead picking a solution once all the alternatives were evaluated.  This was very different than my past experiences with problem-solving where I would find a solution and run with it. I now have a new way to approach problems that focuses on end-goals versus immediate action.