Maya Hopson

The best career advice I've ever received is to seek unknown and uncertainty, because that's usually where you're going to find the most growth. If every conversation that you have, you feel comfortable in, you're probably not pushing yourself enough. Whether you want to do that or not is kind of up to you, and everybody's situation is different, but I've always found this to be true personally, and especially professionally in the last year. There's so much potential after you're a little bit uncomfortable or nervous in the beginning. You might still be nervous after, or scared about the next step, but you'll get more used to it, and you'll be able to climb higher, because that will start coming down every step of the way.

Throw yourself off the deep end, I would say. I took a gap semester before going to college and lived in Australia for four months on a working visa. I just worked full-time at a restaurant and lived in hostels the whole time, and then went to college after that. That alone shaped so much of my college career, just by knowing that you're capable of doing something like that on your own, and throwing yourself in a new place, a new environment. Traveling or not traveling, but just going to college in general too, is truly how you will learn to float, and that you will learn to float. Just trust yourself that you can give yourself that sturdy ground, and you're kind of the only one that can do that, to kind of find peace in that.

Some opportunities I'm experiencing right now include being on calls with investors about my app prototype that I've been working on, which is really exciting, so I'm hoping if that goes somewhere. Some challenges for sure are that this is such a changing time in life, it's just such a limbo stage. I'm out of college now and about to start my career, and also have these kind of personal career interests that I'm trying to balance all at the same time. I want to make time for all my family and friends and be grounded in the best way that I can.

I would say empathy, integrity, and awareness. I'll explain awareness a little bit more, but being aware of your own actions and how you work in the world, I think, is the best way to kind of weave in with others and be so empathetic towards other people's situations and their awarenesses within themselves, within the world. If you can kind of blend that together, then you can lead yourself, you can kind of help lead the people around you and make that greater impact, but you have to be able to be self-aware enough to kind of take those steps. That's acknowledging the good, the bad and the ugly, all throughout that, and understanding every other person has those different attributes too, and kind of just really leading with kindness and understanding.