Zayn's Digest - March Edition
👋 Hey! I'm a 17-year-old from Seattle, WA. I'm currently hosting a podcast, Foundations, which is focused on cultivating a positive, virtual community for listeners. 🎙️
March Retrospective: Statistics, case studies, and presentations were the three key items that I focused on in March. I spend the majority of March in focus mode completing a challenge for the United Nations to help bring more Senegalese women onto the digital economy. The podcast content lean this month, bringing focus to two key episodes on self-improvement and life purpose. I also had the opportunity to talk at the Zappos All-Hands meeting and was named a top writer under the Innovation tag on Medium!
I’m all about efficiency so this is what you can expect in this newsletter.
Impacting 20,400 women in Senegal by working with the United Nations
Podcasts on discovering work-life harmony + having a bias towards fulfillment
March Projects
Additional Items + Extra Content
Impacting 20,400 women in Senegal by working with the United Nations 🚀
Background: On average, one village of 35 women in Senegal misses out on earning $3395/year (170% current income) due to a lack of digital literacy. This month I focused on enabling more women and girls in Senegal to access, create, and influence technology.
What did the recommendation consist of?
Working on a problem in a developing country allowed me to seek on-the-ground perspectives and secure meetings with three of the top non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the world. I also generated a strategic partnership with Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize Winner, Molly Melching who is the Founder of Tostan (Ranked as the 41st NGO in the world by the Global Journal).
The partnership allows us to employ a digital skills curriculum into Tostan’s existing community empowerment program which focuses on teaching women basic literacy, numeracy, project management skills, and business skills.
Mini Post-Mortem (top 2 learnings)
Building Perspective - I’ve never visited Senegal and only understood the context of the country and problem through secondary resources. In order to solve a problem of this magnitude it was extremely important that I had conversations with Senegalese women on-the-ground in order to become context aware and seek understanding around the existing infrastructure + problem.
Stay inquisitive - I don’t believe there is ever going to be a time where I will stop asking questions. Questions are the 🔑 that unlock everything in our world.
Good questions = good answers and good answers = more context and more context = better results.
Podcasts on discovering work-life harmony + having a bias towards fulfillment 🎙️
Background: In addition to focusing on cultivating a positive, virtual community for listeners, Foundations Podcast, aims to give listeners a holistic view of the world. In March I released 2 episodes.
Episode 41 - Discovering work-life harmony
TL;DR
The first step that leads towards a harmonious delta between work and life is by surrounding yourself with supportive people that allow you to optimize this idea to your personal life.
What does this mean?
Having accountability partners or equivalent peers in your life that are adamant about finding a balance or can regulate the time you’re spending on work vs. life will help ensure that neither work nor life gets too high on the seesaw.
Episode 42 - ZChat with Xiangan and Yaman
TL;DR
Having a bias towards fulfillment means dichotomizing the one of the most important traits that leads to happiness - dopamine. It’s about asking yourself the question of what you want now vs. what you want the most.
What does this mean?
There are several blockers on the road to fulfillment but the two notable barriers are: consistency and discipline. In order to reach fulfillment we have to think long-term and optimize our thinking for the next 3-5 years. Asking questions like will going on Instagram provide me value in 3-5 years or is watching this YouTube video the best use of my time now and thinking about our intention behind these activities will help us optimize our life for what we want the most as opposed to what we want now.
March Projects 💡
Speaking at the Zappos All-Hands Meeting
Background: This year’s Zappos All-Hands meeting featured several students from The Knowledge Society. I had the opportunity to talk about some of the preliminary work I’ve done with augmented reality and special education students!
Working on my Book and Enhancing our Education System
Background: I’ve been developing a book with the Creator Institute at Georgetown University. The working title is: Gamifying Education, and the premise of the book is centered around introducing incentives into the classroom that focus on student growth, relationship building, and project-based learning.
This past month I spent most of my time researching the history of public education + how project-based learning (PBL) and career path preparation can level students up and lead to a maximization of human potential.
Mini Post-Mortem (top learning point)
PBL Answers Questions: Perhaps the most popular question in the classroom today from a student standpoint is - where will I use this in real life? A study by defined learning showed that after a year of students immersing themselves in PBL learning there was a reported increase in student engagement, excitement, and they understood the applications of their learning and it motivated them to work harder.
Presenting at the Tech Pod Fellows Social Media Spotlight Meeting
Background: Tech Pod is a community excited about the business side of tech. Over the past few months, Tech Pod has exponentially grown and we currently have 12,100+ email subscribers, 3,200+ followers and 2M+ views on LinkedIn, and have hosted 20+ events held in our first six months as an organization.
This month the social media team at Tech Pod spoke at the fellowship meeting + I wanted to include a couple learning bytes that are applicable to building better LinkedIn content.
Mini Post-Mortem (top learning point)
Leverage the Analytics: Having the consumer become apart of your content routine is one of the best ways to engage with your audience + drive consistent results. After each post you make on LinkedIn check out the analytics and understand how your consumers are interacting with your post, whether or not the time you posted drives high engagement, or if you need to add better hashtags because the impression rates are low. We’re in a data-driven society, use the resources available to you + utilize it to extend your reach.
Additional Items + More Content 🦄
- ICDC Qualifier (My partner, Brogan, and I placed 2nd at the Washington State DECA conference for the event - Buying and Merchandising and will be presenting at International Competition next month)
- Top Writer, Innovation on Medium (This month I was notified that I’ve become a top writer under the innovation tag on Medium! Most of my content centers around how we can innovate in our own lives and foster personal growth.)
- Support Staff/Judge at the ETH Blockchain Global Hackathon (The ETF community continues to power innovations in the next generation of Blockchain features.. I assisted with the judging of over 20 competitions regarding the future of NFT tech)
👋
Hey, hey thanks for reading the newsletter! I would love to hear your thoughts on March and some items you worked on! Check out my calendly, LinkedIn, and podcast to get in touch and reply to this email if you want to chat!