On Sunday, July 25th, 2021, AYLUS held their first national conference via the Zoom platform. Over 300 people attended. Starting at 9:00 am Pacific Time, the 2021-2022 Presidents of AYLUS, Katherine Wei and Samuel Li, went through the Opening Ceremony and instructed the audience on how to participate in the raffle and how to record volunteer hours.
At 9:15 am (PT)., Anthony Yang, the 2021-2022 Chair of Career Development, introduced and pinned Myeisha Boyd – an analyst at Goldman Sachs, Jennifer Gan – an associate in JP Morgan, Ryan Chou – an investor at JetBlue Technology Ventures, considered amazing by Motley Fool Everlasting Stocks, and Cindy Zhi – a Tax Director for Electronic Arts, for the Business Career Panel.
They were asked many questions by the chair, including their experiences working in the business field and their definition of success. The speakers emphasized many values needed to succeed in the business industry, such as communication. The speakers also accepted questions from the audience, such as “Is opting for merchant cash advance really necessary?”, and answered them for the remaining time.
After a five-minute break, the Medicine Career Panel started at 10:05 am (PT), featuring Dr. Joanna Xiu – a cancer research scientist at Caris Life Sciences, and Professor Alan Charney – a Medical Director at Novartis also a teacher at New York University. The two scientists first introduced themselves and the steps they had taken to get where they are currently. They further expanded on the classes they took in school, their beliefs on deciding what to major and what school to apply to, as well as shared ideas on how to get started for aspiring workers in the medical field. They answered many questions from the President and the audience. The session flowed smoothly and everybody learned a lot.
At 10:55 am, the Law Career Panel started, with Scott Lin – a Corporate Lawyer at Cooley LLP, and Leslee Cohen – a Corporate and Securities Lawyer at Hershman Cohen LLC, a Law Firm she co-founded in Chicago, being our guest speakers. They stressed the tremendous amounts of writing involved in their work, and also explained the need to be able to sift through tons of legal documents, read and analyze books and other works of writing, and how crucial it is to be able to communicate easily. The two lawyers recommended many other pieces of advice that are helpful not just in the law area, but also in one’s daily life – such as the importance of being nice to everybody you meet, maintaining connections, and pursuing a major that you genuinely have interest and focus in.
The last session before the lunch break was the STEM Panel, explained by Alice Yang, a Machine Learning Software Engineer at Facebook, and Dr. Hualiang Shi, a Staff Reliability Engineer and Engineer Manager at Lyft’s Level 5 Self Driving Division. In this field, the two engineers talked about bringing your own unique perspective, since STEM by itself covers a lot of different areas with lots of different people. The questions asked by the chairs and audience led them to talk about being in a position where you can grow, and also the importance of collaboration and working on projects.
At 1 pm (PT), the conference resumed with Session 5, which was about Personal Branding And Networking. Stephanie Su, a student at UC Berkeley with over 9,000 followers in LinkedIn, 2.2 million views, and paid sponsorships, and also an intern with the CEO and CXO of FIveable, wasn’t available when the session started, but she had already prepared a video and PowerPoint slides beforehand. The video, shared by President Katherine Wei, shared Stephanie’s tips to making an account and posts on LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, and various other social media platforms. The session was mainly based around LinkedIn, since that’s the one Stephanie mainly uses. She shared the rules she learned and followed from her time on LinkedIn, and she also shared the steps she took to become an influencer. She further shared the formats and advice she followed when posting, such as the capability to network, interact with other posts, send personalized invitations, and avoid burnout. Towards the end of the session, Stephanie was able to log on and take questions from the audience. The amount of work it took to become a large force on social media surprised me, and I’m sure it amazed many other attendees as well.
Session 6 was on Scientific Research and started at 1:50 pm. There were four speakers: Ellen Xu, a researcher exploring the connection between technology and healthcare; John Rho, an upcoming freshman at Harvard University who researches audiology and computational biology; Wenjun Hou, a rising freshman at MIT and a researcher of quantum computing; and Lucy Zha, a rising freshman at Yale University researching public health and biomedicine. The four researchers shared their experiences in research. They described the struggles they faced during the research process, such as doubt of their progress and unexpected results. They also shared many obstacles they faced with conferences and classes and how they overcame them.
The Community Service Panel began at 2:40 pm and included Michelle Zong, a rising sophomore in MIT, founder of the AYLUS Columbus Branch and last year’s AYLUS President; and Jack Mao, a rising freshman at Stanford University. The two panelists described their work for the community throughout high school, such as Michell’s founding of the Columbus branch when she was a freshman in high school. They both had to do at least a hundred hours of service in high school and recommended others to Google volunteer places to do service. They offered inspirational advice on becoming a leader and staying strong. They also offered advice on how to include your community service in college applications – like focusing more on the impact of your work than the quantity.
The last panel of the first ever National AYLUS Conference was on College Applications. At 3:30 pm Pacific Time, Sasha Tunsiricharoengul, a rising freshman at Harvard; Sung Cho, an incoming student at Princeton University; Areeb Alam, a rising freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, and Kaylee Yin, who will be attending Cornell University in the fall, all showed up to share their knowledge. All four of them unanimously agreed on the massive importance of good time management. A few of them expressed their regrets on leaving all their essays to Winter Break, resulting in late nights throughout the whole vacation. Others described the plan they stuck to, such as applying to three or four scholarships per month. All agreed that not procrastinating during their college application season would have helped immensely. They gave further guidance, encouraging the audience to apply to shoot their shot in all the colleges they would like to go to, and recommended students make Excel Forms to keep track of all the activities and deadlines during the junior and senior high school years.
At the end of the conference, AYLUS held a raffle with multiple prizes, like Magoosh Subscriptions, a Makey Makey kit, backpacks, and a Dell Chromebook. There were over a thousand contestants (many of the three hundred plus attendees signed up a maximum of eight times). Congratulations to all the winners who won these fabulous prizes, and thank you to the AYLUS members and sponsors that enabled these prizes to be available. The conference ended at approximately 4:30 pm Pacific Time. A huge thank you to all the speakers who showed up on this day to share their thoughts and words.
Volunteers attended the conference are:
2 Panels (2 hr): Jordan Zheng
3 Panels (3 hr): Eric Qi, Andy Gu
4 Panels (4 hr): Alvin Zheng, Richa Paliwal, William Sun, Alexander Sun, Kate Liu
6 Panels (6 hr): Karen Xu, Sophia Fu, Thomas Liang, Zide Liu
7 Panels (7 hr): Chenyu Jin
8 Panels (8 hr): Zixuan Liu, Evan Du, Iris Yang, Yifan Wang, Hannah Sang, Sasha Kuzmenko, Winnie Jiang, Leo Jiang, Elizabeth Hu, Aila Jiang, Derek Zhu
Reported by: Elizabeth Hu