Promoting Success with Access

The senior class took hold of the steering wheel for the second half of our Economics course. The focus of the course was on the book “Doughnut Economics” by Kate Raworth. In her book, she visits the idea of old economic theory and renovates it in a more modern way of thinking. My class of 14 students was divided into groups of two. Each group focused on a chapter in “Doughnut Economics” and had to teach a lesson based on the chapter. My friend JN and I’s chapter, “Create to Regenerate”, was about the difference between a circular economy and linear economy. JN and I wanted to make our lesson interactive (aka not showing a wordy slideshow) so we had the class participate in a simulation. The simulation went as planned, with some minor discrepancies. Once the class and the teacher reflected on what they learned from our simulation, JN and I felt very accomplished of our successful lesson! It was very cool to hear other student’s presentations and views on the other chapters of “Doughnut Economics”. After studying Raworth’s book, the senior class went downtown to WeWork to visit a company named Rheaply. Instead of creating new, why not create a community of companies willing to reduce the amount of garbage at landfills? Rheaply aims to create a circular economy with creating an accessible, sustainable market for companies to sell and buy old resources. Rheaply was started by a young, black man, which is really inspiring to see a person of color as the CEO of a company. I gained a lot of valuable knowledge from this Field Experience.
To wrap the end of this term, I have created a mock chapter for “Doughnut Economics”. In this project, I will introduce another way to think like a 21st century economist.

Promoting Success with Access

JMP, Promoting Success with Access, (2019)

As I conduct a tour throughout the halls of the Art Institute of Chicago with my black and brown friends, unwelcoming stares from white tourist families burn. Black security guards stand at their post with blank faces, ignored by visitors left and right. When I leave late from work, I see older hispanic women cleaning up after fancy events held for the rich. 7 in 10 senior executives in the Fortune 500 are white men. Seeing a person of color be a senior executive in a large company is unusual. This system is still around because it is harder for minorities, first generation, women, and low-income people to earn high education and have their voice heard. It is a major problem in our current world that people of color (POC) are not represented right in our economy. Imagine what the future COULD look like. If it wasn’t unusual to see a black woman as CEO of a company, younger black kids would look up to her and be inspired by simply seeing someone that looks like them in power. If the economy provided a space for Latino sellers in desert neighborhoods, neighbors would come out and create stronger community. This sort of global perspective benefits both parties through cultural capital. Cultural capital would give power to people of color in the market and become successful and rise up the social ladder without necessarily having financial capital. Every market should exist once the economic world is more accessible for minorities.

Raworth says in “Doughnut Economics”,“Economics is not a matter of discovering laws: it is essentially a question of design.” We must fight the status quo right now and bring more representation in businesses for younger generations of people of color. Markets are not the most accessible right now, but young POC are working on it. Personally, I am fighting my own battle in the market world. I am a Latina, first generation, low-income queer woman that has started a jewelry business this past summer. I sell clay earrings based off of Mexican sweet treats. Since there are no spaces in the Southeast side of Chicago to sell my art to my intended audience (Hispanic/Latinx people), I travel two hours to the northside of Chicago to sell my jewelry at pop up shops. Since majority of buyers in the northside are not familiar with Mexican culture, I often have to teach about my heritage while trying to sell items. Trying to validate and educate my culture to anglo people as a Mexican teen is tough, so I usually do not get very far. The result? Traveling back two hours to the Southeast side with a backpack still full of jewelry. The market is not accessible to me or Latinx buyers. We both don’t benefit from this situation. I don’t sell jewelry to Latinx people, and the Latinx people are not able to buy my art at a location by them. According to Fortune, seventy-three percent of the senior executives, men and women, are white. The rest are 21% Asian, 3% Latino/a, 2% black, 0.6% two or more races, 0.2% Native American and 0.1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Since this is the case, I was very surprised to see a black man as the CEO of the company we visited for our Field Experience. Gary Cooper, CEO of Rheaply, said ,“Starting a company is really really hard. Starting a company in tech, as a first time founder, is three more times as hard. Not a lot of founders are minorities, less than 1%. So there’s a lot of things that are hard to navigate. I think the hardest thing is taking the leap. To just say, hey, I believe in this, I think it could work.” I think Gary understands the struggle as much as I do, but we still both took the leap to start our business with great confidence. Once the market world is more accessible to minorities, people like Gary and I could thrive and sell more to our intended audiences, and benefit those who are looking for our services

Citations
Jones, Stacy. “Fortune 500: 7 in 10 Senior Executives Are White Men.” Fortune, Fortune, 10 June 2017, fortune.com/2017/06/09/white-men-senior-executives-fortune-500-companies-diversity-data/.

Raworth, Kate. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think like a 21st-Century Economist. Random House Business Books, 2018.

Curating My Future Life Choices

Life beyond high school is exciting to plan for because I want to live the happiest life possible. I hope to study Anthropology/Sociology and Art History in my college career. 
Outside of the classroom, my internship at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) sparked my interest in the intersection of art and culture in non-anglo societies. My supervisor taught my co-workers and I the importance of accurate representation of indigenous communities in museums. Many indigenous artifacts at museums have been removed from their countries without permission, which leads to false descriptions and carelessly curated galleries. After research, I co-led a discussion panel with other AIC teens about how this affects visitors' impressions of indigenous art. We decided to advocate for change, which was difficult because the museum followed traditional practices that have never been examined by young people of color. We shared our frustrations and solutions for accurately representing indigenous culture to the curator of the African galleries at AIC, resulting in a recurated African gallery. This experience has inspired me to change how museums acquire art on a larger scale by becoming a museum curator as my future career, especially because minorities are underrepresented in the art world.
But the question is, what does that look like? So many big decisions have to be made, such as picking a college to attend, what major to pursue, what jobs to apply to during and after college, and ways of budgeting money. I learned how to make educated guesses and assumptions and use existing data to create a plan for my life after high school in my Economics class. My most favorite take away from this class was becoming comfortable with Google Sheets. I learned how to do calculations and organize data in Google Sheets. Practicing this skill will be beneficial to me in the future. 

JMP, Lifetime Earnings of a Museum Curator, (2019)

I calculated the lifetime earnings of a museum curator. A museum curator's salary ranges, depending on how much experience they have. I calculated how much I would make if I started working right when I graduate from college ,until retirement in 2063. Since I will earn more money with the more experience I gain, I have predicted that I will make around $2,030,839 in my lifetime. I interviewed Ayana Chavis, Program Coordinator of Youth and Family Programs at the Art Institute of Chicago, about her experience in Museum Education. She has been my supervisor at both internships I have been part of since junior year. 

1. What is your career? 

"My job encompasses planning, implementing and supporting our programs for family audiences which include everyday, seasonal and annual programming, such as our festivals and some offsite programming. I am also a manager of teen programs here in our division and department, where I mentor the teens in our internships here at the museum."

2. What college did you attend? Why did you decide to go to college? Why did you decide to attend your college?

"I decided to go to college, because really it was the only way I had ever been taught that I could sustain a life for myself as an independent woman. My mom was the person in my family that really pushed me to obtain a higher education and to always do well in school. In the fall of 2011, I attended Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), in Richmond, Virginia where I would graduate with a Bachelors of Science degree in Anthropology and African American Studies. I decided to go there, because I liked the environment of the school. Mostly I felt as if I could see myself there and indulge in the culture of the university and of the city. The school also had the major I was considering initially, which was journalism. I also liked that Richmond wasn’t too far from home, but I got to have a sense of newness by going to college out of state since I’m from North Carolina."

3. Was college a worthwhile time and money investment for you? Does your career right now make up for the investment during college?

"College was worthwhile of my time, because I felt that I experienced so many new things, learned so much about myself and how to critically think about the world, especially as a black person and woman living in the United States. I met so many new people and built amazing connections. I have to say that besides receiving a full scholarship during graduate school, the money I invested in my undergraduate degree at VCU was not worth the debt I would take on considering that the career I am currently in does not pay enough to maintain a comfortable standard of living in Chicago and allow me to pay my student loans without sacrifice. I like what I do, but I don’t think that a passion for something makes up for being underpaid. The field of education is highly undervalued in terms of the hard work that we do and how it is decided how much that is worth in terms of salary and wages."

4. What advice do you have for me on the value of my college education?

"The advice I would offer to you Jessenia, is to follow your heart and make good decisions in the moment. Always know that there are so many possibilities to the way you can achieve what you want. Know that while your education is important, it does not solely make up who you are or say everything about your worth as a person. Who you are is not about what you do, it is about the content of your character. And if you lead yourself into your college experience being sure about that, what you want and advocating for yourself first, you cannot go wrong."

After conducting my extended research about the pros and cons of Pitzer College and Amherst College, how long it would take to pay off college loans, and hearing from a museum professional’s experience, I have decided that I would like to attend Pitzer College. I think the openness of the community and colleges around it, combination of the majors I want, and warm weather area is worth the investment. I am excited to find out which school I get admitted to, which will slightly alter my predicted plan.