A World of Entrepreneurship and Politics
Emily's Monthly Newsletter: Summer 2021
To me, the past summer has been a time to further my interests by applying my skills in the real world, mainly through internships and nonprofit organizations. I am more than happy to share some of my accomplishments and takeaways in this newsletter!
Note: This newsletter is longer than other monthly newsletters as I covered three months’ worth of experience and takeaways in one newsletter. To make it more interactive, I embedded multiple free resources (workshop recordings, takeaways, etc) throughout the newsletter. Hope you can walk away feeling inspired!
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🙋♀️ About Me
🎤 My nonprofit: Make a Statement
📜 Congressional Internship
⚖️ Law Internship
💡 MIT LaunchX Program
🔍 Looking Forward
📱 Stay Connected
🙋♀️ About Me
I am Emily Han, a 15-year-old innovator in Bay Area, California. I’m adventurous and curious, with an ambitious goal to travel the world one day. My interests lie in entrepreneurship, politics, marketing, and I’m currently exploring various topics in the STEM world.
🎤 My nonprofit: Make a Statement
Make a Statement is a nonprofit I co-founded in June 2020 in order to make public speaking education easily accessible for all. To celebrate Make a Statement’s one-year anniversary while furthering our cause, we hosted our first international Speech & Debate Tournament.
Different from other tournaments, Make a Statement aims to create a safe environment for novice competitors; we do this by only accepting experienced Speech & Debate competitors as our judges and requiring all judges to provide detailed feedback for each competitor.
We received 38 signups from 6 countries and 9 states. For a more detailed recap of our tournament, click here.
Another big part of Make a Statement is hosting free public speaking workshops on a regular basis. During the summer, we hosted 3 workshops on various public speaking topics. Workshop recordings are linked below if you want to check them out!
Confident Public Speaker Workshop | Recap | Recording
Intro to High School Lincoln-Douglas Debate Workshop | Recap | Recording
Intro to Public Speaking Workshop | Recording
Lastly, I am super excited to share that Make a Statement is featured on Forbes! To me, this is not only an opportunity to share why I started Make a Statement, but it also represents a milestone for Make a Statement and a witness of its growth in the past year. Read the Forbes feature here!
📜 Congressional Internship
From January 2021 to August 2021, I worked as the Executive Assistant at the Congressional campaign for Saratoga City Council Member Rishi Kumar. Here’s a recap of my work during this internship.
Leadership
Worked one-on-one with Council Member Kumar on a daily basis and hosted monthly Town Hall Meetings for Council Member Kumar.
🎥 March 2021 Town Hall Meeting Recording
Oversaw the campaign with ~300 interns and faciliated weekly campaign-wide meetings.
Invested 350+ hours into the campaign and received campaigm MVP award three times.
Policy
Led a Water Project to successfully reduced San Jose Company's General Rate Case (GRC) Increase by ~8%, decreasing the cost of water bills for hundred of thousands of citizens during the pandemic.
📰 Check out Water Project press release here!
Organized a youth-led Anti AAPI Hate Crime Rally during the peak of AAPI hate crime in the U.S.
📰 Check out news feature by San Ramon News here!
📰 Check out news feature by Wildcats Tribune here!
Social Media
Managed Council Member Kumar’s social media platforms, such as Instagram and YouTube.
Led both graphic design and video production teams with a total of 60+ interns. Held weekly meetings and distributed weekly assignments to each intern.
Created 50+ graphics and videos for the campaign.
🎨 Check out some of my graphic designs here!
Conducted monthly training workshops with interns on topics such as graphic design, social media marketing, and video production.
Executive Assistant
Booked meetings for Council Member Kumar and faciliated his schedule.
Overall, my experience at the campaign was a blast! Here are a few takeaways from this experience.
Takeaways
I learned about what it is like to work with a politician on a regular basis and the rigorous working style of political leaders.
I learned that there are always opportunities for those who constantly practice and refine skills in their areas of interest. My interest and background in graphic design allowed me to contribute to the campaign and showcase my leadership.
I learned that to lead is to put your members before you. One person cannot run a whole campaign, a team can.
⚖️ Law Internship
With my interests in humanities, I wanted to challenge myself by shadowing at a law firm to more about what lawyers do and to strengthen my legal knowledge. I obtained a shadowing internship position at the Law Office of Seth W. Wiener.
During the internship, I examined legal documents, attended depositions and court hearings, and learned about various ongoing cases. Overall, I was able to enhance my legal knowledge and strengthen my interest in law.
💡 MIT LaunchX Program
MIT LaunchX is an entrepreneurial program for high schoolers who are passionate about solving problems through entrepreneurship. It is a highly competitive and rigorous 5-week program where students start their own business from scratch. We attended daily workshops and electives held by professors from MIT, Wharton, Harvard Business School, and successful entrepreneurs.
As an immigrant, I recognize the difficulty and complication of finding a perfect immigrant lawyer in a short amount of time when an urgent situation occurs. Our team and I decided to tackle this problem by creating a service that eases the process of lawyer search.
“Save valuable time with your immigration progress with Ternify, the nation's fastest reliable immigration lawyer search system.”
Now, Ternify is officially a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit in California. We are super excited to help as many immigrants as possible through our service. Stay tuned for more to come!
🎥 Check out Ternify’s pitch video here!
🌐 Check out Ternify’s beta website here!
Takeaways from LaunchX
I learned about entrepreneurial mindsets as well as the legal process of starting a company.
I learned how to conduct market research, find a customer persona, optimize entrepreneurial strategy, analyze data, establish a branding, protytpe, create a unique value proposition, pitch products, and more!
I learned that the best team work is when everyone focuses on a specific sector as opposed to everyone collaborating on the same tasks.
As a highly competitive entrepreneurship program with a 10-20% acceptance rate, filling out the application process for LaunchX or other prestigious summer programs can be intimidating. Luckily, I am honored to say that my application video has been recognized by MIT LaunchX as one of the best application videos they received! Thus, I hope to share some of my tips on applying for prestigious summer programs solely based on my acceptance into MIT LaunchX and Future of the Business World Program at the Wharton School of Business.
🎥 Watch my application video here!
Tips
Be yourself! I know this might sound cliché, but the summer program admission officers truly want to learn about what motivates you, excites you, upsets you, and keeps you going. The best way to stand out from others is simply just to be you!
Always start early! Save at least 1 week before the application due date and ask at least 2-3 friends or mentors to proofread your application. Printing out your application is the best way to spot grammar mistakes and typos.
If you are filming a video, make sure you edit the video in a style that showcases your personality. For instance, I like to begin my application video with a very uplifting intro music because I am a very energetic and extroverted person. If you do not know how to edit videos yourself, ask a friend to help you out and buy them boba in return. Though editing does not determine the quality of your application, it certainly helps you stand out!
🔍 Looking Forward
In September, I will kick-start my journey as an innovator at The Knowledge Society, where I hope to conduct in-depth research on STEM topics I am interested in. Also in the next few months, I will begin working more on my school clubs, such as Speech and Debate, Model United Nations, Future Business Leaders of America, and more. But more importantly, I hope to begin living a healthier lifestyle and to start prioritizing my health. Here are a few upcoming milestones!
Goals
Finish up my business marketing research paper
Work on an exciting chapter project for Make a Statement
Start innovating and exploring my interests at TKS
📱 Stay Connected
Emilyhan0411@gmail.com | LinkedIn | Portfolio | Schedule a Meeting