During this week’s learning session a guest speaker and previous summer fellow through the Columbus Foundation spoke about her time during the program and her journey into the beginning of her career. Of her discussion, the most significant and noteworthy conversations revolves around priorities and goals in careers.

This topic has been critical in my deliberations and considerations about my career: what is important to me? I know without a reasonable doubt that I want to contribute towards the building up and improvement of communities and people’s lives, but I’m not exactly sure how much I should give up in order to achieve that. From the inverse perspective, a higher wage that involves soul-crushing work isn’t ideal for me either.

Working at a non-profit has shown me that a middle ground does exist. Rewarding and impactful work doesn’t have to exist purely at the detriment to my professional or financial well-being, which has been encouraging.

To zoom back in to the present and my duties at Equitas, I spent this last week searching for potential donors for the event that I attended the recording session for. I was tasked with finding local (Dayton) organizations, companies, and groups that share Equitas Health’s mission statement. I was able to do this by looking at events hosted by groups that Equitas may already be associated with or serve as community-oriented institutions, and then look into the groups that sponsored those events. I was surprised to see the number of groups that helped fund these events and I was doubly surprised to see the variation in industry and differences in products/services they provide. It was definitely interesting and there were groups that I wouldn’t suspect donate or sponsor that made the list.

As this summer comes to a close I am trying to set my intentions to meaningful reflection in my experiences and use them for career and industry decision making. Additionally I am trying to consider what I will include in my wrap-up presentation. The finish line is in sight!