Building Tools for Empowerment
 

 About Me

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My name is Devin English and I am a Product Manager. I combine my interest in human behavior and data to understand the interaction between humans and information. Through my studies at the University of Washington and in my professional career, I have learned about the unjust lack of resources for women's professional communities. This knowledge has led me to work with these communities such as Phi Sigma Rho, a STEM sorority to provide accessible resources to teach confidence and provide a positive change, and Women of WatchGuard (WoW) at my current job.

This portfolio houses my reflections of who I am as a leader and archives my experiences and knowledge as a leader throughout time. Leadership is an area of importance to me and is something that I want to continuously practice and study. By creating this space for a documented history of the skills I have gained, I will be able to look back and reflect as I continue to grow as a leader.

 My Why

My why and my values are intimately intertwined, and they both stem from my journey of growing into an empowered woman. I realize that my journey to the woman I am now has been largely influenced by my compassion, authenticity, growth, resiliency, and ultimately my desire to be happy, I am still growing into my identity as a woman and I have only just begun to understand how that identity has impacted my life and experiences. The most prevalent impact my gender has on my life is centered around my self-esteem and confidence. In my experience, one of the greatest perpetrators of my anxieties in life is worrying about other people’s perceptions of me. In short, I have felt the pressures society places on women to look good and act ‘a certain way’ which can be disempowering for many women, including myself. The ultimate consequence has been the inability to feel comfortable in my own skin, and I am on a journey toward changing that which I truly believe will influence my life’s work.

I have recently begun to feel more comfortable in my skin by surrounding myself with strong women. Joining the STEM sorority Phi Sigma Rho has built my confidence as a professional in a field dominated by men by hearing the stories of other women and seeing their success first hand. Additionally, living with three other powerful women has encouraged me to be myself and to think less about how others view me. I am now able to dance like no one is watching, wear clothes that I love, and embrace my femininity.

This experience of growing into my own skin has inspired me to help others do the same. I particularly focus on empowering underrepresented communities such as women in STEM, and the disabled community. In my leadership roles in these areas, I have learned to value the individual experience. I am motivated to create a welcoming space where I can facilitate others to discover their own confidence.

 Core Values

Over time, as I have gained experiences and grown I have developed a set of values that motivate my actions as a leader. These values align with my passion to empower underrepresented groups. Some of my core values include:

1.  Compassion

Compassion is an understanding of someone else’s emotions and the desire to help them. To me, compassion is what drives me to help others in my everyday life and to not just work for those groups, but with them. This value has lead me to seek out programs where I can help underrepresented groups, such as the disabled community. I am currently an executive member of the UW chapter of Special Olympics which is a unified recreational sports team that strives for the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities. It is compassion that motivates me to put effort into making this program the best it can be in order to help others.

2.  Authenticity

Authenticity to me is to be true to one’s self and to be genuine. I think it takes a lot of self-awareness and self-love to be authentically you and I think those things are important to be accepting of yourself and others. Authenticity is one of the values that when put into practice can lead to more fulfilling experiences and relationships so I work to teach others how to be their authentic selves. This is why I work on developing tools that empower others to be authentically themselves, such as creating a VR game for the visually impaired to build confidence in who they are and to be self-accepting.

3.  Growth

Growth is what makes life exciting, to work towards being your authentic self is what growth means to me. I think we are constantly growing with every action we take and person we meet. Growth allows us to think more critically of ourselves and the world around us by acknowledging the difference between our past, present, and future selves. This critical assessment helps us learn more about ourselves, how we function in the world and what we truly value. I continue to grow with every experience I have, an example of this is the immense amount of skills I learned while building an alumni and networking committee for my sorority from the ground up. I went through struggles and successes building up this committee and with those experiences, I have learned more about myself and taken the knowledge I have gained to grow into a better leader.

4.  Resilience

I think resilience is important and is something we continually must develop. Resilience to me is the ability to recognize and push past adversity. It is impossible to avoid challenges throughout life however, it is possible to adapt to these hardships and that helps shape who we are becoming. We all build resilience in our own ways, it may not be as simple as getting up after a fall, but strength and perseverance push us to become who we want to be. While working with Hall Council I experiences many difficult situations such as a lack of membership participation, but during this time I was able to practice skills that made me more resilient and I continue to use those skills in other areas I am involved in.

5.  Happiness

While happiness is a value of mine, I also like to think of it as a goal. Using my other values as tools to reach happiness is what I strive for. I am not sure how to define happiness yet. I think the definition of happiness is something that looks different for each person and changes throughout our life. It is important to not materialize or quantify happiness, instead focus on the feeling state of happiness. Right now, I would say the love for my true self and teaching others to do the same is what makes me happy.

 Leadership Identities

Through my experience as a leader in many different organizations and for many different communities I have learned to define my leadership style in three ways:

1.     Nurturer of diverse communities

As a leader, I think it is important to work with people and not for people. During my time in Hall Council, I worked to build a community for a diverse group of new college students living independently, often for the first time. Our mission was to create a space within the residential hall where residents could feel at home. With Lander Hall being the home to the largest international student population, we worked with many cultural communities to create traditional cultural events. While planning these events, we invited members of those cultures to be part of the planning process. Being able to bring many people together from many different backgrounds is an important skill that I have learned from my experience as a leader in Hall Council.

2.     Ability advocate

For the past two years, I have worked on the leadership team for the UW Special Olympics chapter. Special Olympics is an organization that uses unified sports to promote the inclusion of people who have disabilities. During my time on the leadership team, I have created programs to build confidence in the members’ abilities through encouraging teamwork, building sports skills, and developing social networks. Ability is much more than just being able-bodied or able-minded, it is the capability to accomplish one’s desires. An example of advocating for ability outside of the framework of disabilities is my experience winning the best impact award at a hackathon. During the hackathon, I created an app that provides people who are in abusive relationships the ability to keep confidential information safe from internet monitoring abuse. In the future, I want to continue to work for creating resources to increase accessibility for the disabled community and to build tools for all people to accomplish their desires.

3.     Empowerment engineer

The STEM field has been historically male-dominated which can be disempowering to women in the field. I work to change the narrative of this experience by building up women. I do this through my work as the Alumnae and Networking Committee Head in Phi Sigma Rho, a STEM sorority at UW. I create resources for professional development and career advancement for sorority members. I have organized networking events with alumnae to share stories of what it means to be a woman in STEM. I have also worked closely with a start-up company to provide a safe space for our members to have conversations with alumnae and their career and internship/job opportunities. These resources give women within this community tools to empower and build confidence in the professional endeavors.

 Future Goals

Through my personal experience in the workplace, I can take what disappointed me, what excited me, and what I have learned from other leaders and bring it into my career. During my first internship experience, I encountered the impostor phenomenon where did not feel as though I deserved the opportunity I was given. As I was early in my professional career with little experience, I felt like my skills and abilities were not up to standard. I worked hard to fight against this feeling yet I could not shake the idea that I was not good enough. While that past experience was full of self-doubt, and disempowerment, working at my current job is where I have felt the most empowered. I have been working there for an entire year and the reason why I have stayed is that the company and its leaders have continued to build my confidence in my abilities through a community centered around learning and growing. With opportunities such as lunch and learn seminars, skill workshops, and personal coffee chats I feel like I have the resources to empower myself, which is something I want to do for others.

Having experienced both a disheartening and encouraging work environment I want to work hard to give others a community of empowerment. In my schoolwork, community service, and professional experiences, I have found that I am drawn toward finding ways to improve the experiences of underrepresented and disadvantaged communities. I have recently seen, in real-time, my motivation to build inclusive environments. As a market research analyst in my internship, one of my client’s missions is to promote the advancement of black individuals in high-level work positions. Through this work, I learned that many black professionals have an informal safe space but not a formal one. In the future, as a leader in the professional field, I want to provide a safe space by providing a formal community of support for all groups of people. From my experience as a nurturer of diverse communities, an ability advocate, and an empowerment engineer I am able to create resources for support by utilizing my diverse set of leadership skills and accomplish my goal of empowering others. 

 My Leadership Philosophy

“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
— Bill Gates

Empowerment is a key principle of leadership, but Gates hasn’t told the whole story. Leadership is more than just empowering others, but teaching others how to empower themselves. This can be accomplished by building a community centered around storytelling, inspiring, motiving, and giving purpose to others. Working to build confidence in the lives of underrepresented groups such as people of color, women, and people with disabilities will in turn create new great leaders in the next century; leaders with different perspectives and experiences that diversity our world.

As I have learned through the years is that leaders aren’t born, they are made. As an introverted person in high school, I always thought that my extroverted classmates would be the ones that grow up to be CEOs, Motivational Speakers, and World Leaders, but this way of thinking is wrong, anyone can be a leader. As I grew older and learned more about my passions and interests I found myself taking on leadership roles in areas I cared about. I found a passion for working for the advancement of women in the professional field and for the inclusion of those with disabilities and use my leadership to bring a positive change to those communities. I still identify as an introvert, but through the leadership skills and experiences I have gained, now I also identify as a leader and work to help others discover the leader inside of them.