2x Olympic Gold Medalist.

Water polo is both physically and mentally demanding. In full time training, we practiced for 6 hours a day. To get to the top of the sport, you must know how to constantly push your perceived limits. In industry, this will translate to not being intimidated by any challenge no matter how large. From experience, I know everything can be broken into smaller pieces and incremental gains can add up quickly.

In sports, you are constantly failing no matter how good you are. It is about how you react to those failures that determines your success. Similarly, in mechanical engineering, we are trying to typically solve problems that have yet to be solved. As such, there are going to be lots of failures along the way. I am confident that my resiliency will allow me to keep pursuing new angles.

Squeezing every second out of each day is critical when balancing high level athletics with a demanding major like mechanical engineering. At a minimum, I dedicated 20 hours a week to water polo. In addition, I was often gone for weeks at a time during the quarter for national team tournaments. In a work environment, I believe this will translate into efficiency of completing tasks.

The team is who ultimately wins and each and every member is crucial. There will always be difference in opinion and personality on any team, but you must all work together and respect one another to achieve a common goal. Similarly, mechanical engineering is almost always done in groups. It is important to be open minded and collaborative to come up with a solution that is better than what could be achieved individually!

Throughout my years on different teams, I have learned that leadership is not one size fits all. Some people are vocal leaders while some lead through actions and others embody a mix of the two. As such, I have developed my own personal leadership style, which often changes given the context. In a work setting, I believe my experience of being both a leader and a follower will allow me to seamlessly know when to be more assertive and when to be a learner.