BHP Alum Leads Students in Unique Career Design Workshop

By Kate Shanks, BHP Junior

A couple weeks ago, I attended a workshop put on by BHP for the first time, called Design Your Career. The workshop was led by BHP alumnae Haley Robison, CEO of KAMMOK, an Austin-based startup. As a junior who still isn’t quite sure what I want to do after graduation, I thought the workshop could be really useful to me. I also knew a bit about Haley and knew she was really dynamic, so I was really looking forward to learning more from her.

The workshop was designed to give students tools based on design thinking that could be applied to plan their careers. One of the best activities of the day was a 100 jobs exercise. We each identified 12 jobs that were most appealing to us, then broke into groups to discuss themes emerging from the list. The exercise helped me better understand myself, my passions, my interests, and career options that I hadn’t previously considered.

We then used the prototyping element of design thinking to each plan out three completely different career paths for ourselves. We ended the workshop by bringing those prototype dreams to reality by creating achievable stepping stones for ourselves so we can better understand what we want for our future.

The workshop created a structured but creative space for students to explore different future possibilities. Haley’s experience in design thinking, from her time working at IDEO and working for the Stanford Design School, really helped her to guide us through this unique style of thinking. For me, I found it interesting how I was able to combine elements of what I dream of doing with what I am preparing myself in college to do, in order to propel myself forward. I left the workshop with more tools to design my own career path and excited about all of the directions that I could go in after graduation.

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