Evolve organization provides students with exposure to various career opportunities through online webinars
Courtesy of Kaitlyn Butcher and Isha Puri
Evolve hopes to plan and host a career fair in early 2021 to further help students find career opportunities.
Evolve, an organization run by SCHS students and initiated in the summer of 2020, hopes to prepare and educate students about different career paths as they navigate through their final years of high school.
“Evolve is a student-run organization that hopes to educate young students about new career pathways,” Co-Executive Director junior Kaitlyn Butcher said. “Through this, we really strive to educate students about various different career paths.”
By hosting webinars every other week and bringing in guest speakers from several different fields, Evolve aims to give students as much exposure as possible about career opportunities and successful paths.
“Many people don’t know exactly what they want to do with their future,” Co-Executive Director junior Isha Puri said. “I think that with our webinars, people can learn about these jobs and how you are able to do different jobs and what background you need.”
There are no prerequisites for student attendees except filling out a Google Form linked on Evolve’s website. The Google Form asks students to indicate their career interests to notify them if there is a related webinar. Guest speakers fill out a similar application linked on Evolve’s website.
Evolve has brought in numerous guest speakers, including biomedical engineer Dr. Ally Huang, software engineer Rachit Kataria, and venture capitalist Amit Garg.
“We had a venture capitalist called Amit Garg. He had a unique backstory and originated from Brazil, and he even went to Stanford and Harvard,” Butcher said. “That was cool to see and learn about his backstory.”
Several SCHS students have benefitted from Evolve, including junior Amanda Kay, who believes that it is important for high school students to learn more about potential career paths.
“I’ve attended some of their guest speaker events, and I found it interesting how they were able to gather people from so many different professions,” Kay said. “I think it’s important for students to start learning about what they want to do in the future because there are so many great opportunities that many don’t know of in the first place.”
Aside from webinars, Evolve is hoping to host a career fair in early 2021 to further help students learn about careers from people of all different jobs and backgrounds. They are aiming to have workshops hosted by professionals.
“We hope to have five different people come in and host workshops related to their careers,” Puri said. “For example, if a lawyer were to come in, they would do mock trial workshops.”
Evolve has been growing since this past summer, and both Butcher and Puri appreciate seeing students benefit and learn more about career pathways. They hope to continue aiding their peers in pursuing their passions.
“We get a lot of communication from people, and it is amazing to see people benefit from what we do,” Butcher said. “Having that sense of satisfaction from others and knowing that it positively affects them, that as a whole makes it super memorable and makes it an amazing experience.”