Fahad's Blog: 20A – Growing Your Social Capital -

Christina Wiley, Executive Director, Florida YMCA Youth in Government. Christina is a UF Alumni, as well as a Harvard Graduate School Alumni, with her work focusing on broadening civic engagement within students across the sunshine state, with her leadership position allowing her tons of experience and access to educational tools, much like the one I'm developing.

I found Christina through volunteering with the same program that inspired me to focus on this opportunity.

I've volunteered hundreds of hours with this organization in the past, and Christina's experience is top notch, having worked under her directly, with her helping mentor me as an undergraduate student since she also attended UF.

I asked Christina to look over my opportunity and evaluate it. As someone who also studied political science and now overlooks a model government program, she admitted that a resource such as mine might be invaluable for students within her program, who often struggle when it comes to completing genuine research for model government bills. She felt it would definitely be beneficial, as looking over my revised idea napkin helped her get a complete idea of what my product aimed for, and if it were to take off, she most definitely might be able to help me promote it to potential users.

My marketing expert is Lily Tysinger. A political science graduate whose experience lies in government work, having worked for the state legislature for a number of years and now an executive program director at Florida YMCA Youth in Government. Lily's experience when it comes to working directly with voters and civic education made her an excellent choice for networking, as my product aims to directly help educate the electorate, something that she would appreciate.

I've put in hundreds of hours volunteering for the Y, and Lily was more than happy to see my idea pitch and provide feedback.

Lily's extensive experience working for the state legislature has given her a large breadth of experience when it comes to knowing the electorate. Having given her a chance to evaluate my product, she admitted that it would be beneficial for those interesting in learning more about legislative issues, as uneducated electors are something that she feels very strongly about, with my focus on letting my product clearly identify a piece of legislation's strong and weak points being something that caught her interest.

My industry supplier is Alex Whiteside, a Front End Team Lead at Even Financial, with experience in programming, marketing design, and in academia, the government, along with corporate and start-ups.

I met Alex through volunteering with the Y, as despite his job taking him across the globe, he still returns to volunteer for and contribute heavily to the organization, allowing me to get in touch with him.

Having spent a week earlier this year working directly alongside Alex and getting to know him, he was more than happy to evaluate my product idea and review my idea napkin, as well as provide feedback.

Alex's experience in programming, along with design and marketing allowed him to truly evaluate my idea and the feasibility of implementing it. Alex admitted that it wouldn't be terribly difficult to set up an app and website that mete the requirements of what I was looking for, but admitted that generating a revenue stream would be rather difficult, considering what I was thinking about doing and the associated costs. Alex could also potentially be contracted to help create my product later on, as his experience in various sectors could allow us to further refine my app and make it even better for consumers.

At the start of this assignment, I honestly truly doubted that I might be able to find people who might be able to help me with the idea I had in mind, but found it easier once I truly went back and evaluated my connections. I feel that if I were asked to go and network even more, I would feel a lot more confident, as my experts were all super approachable and easy to talk to, something which I didn't expect. Through completing this assignment, I also felt that I developed a taste for networking, as it was truly enjoyable meeting all of these knowledgeable people and hearing their opinions and evaluations of my product, as they all worked in related fields.

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