Customer service in a fast-paced, high volume coffee bar. Greeting and ringing up customers, building relationships with regulars, creating a welcoming atmosphere. Providing consistent products, maintaining speed, precision, and a positive attitude. Making drinks - pulling espresso shots, steaming milk, latte art, maintaining food safety standards and company aesthetic and quality standards. Consistent learning and training on new skills. Dialing in and tasting coffee/espresso to ensure quality of product, familiarizing myself with flavor profiles, flavor notes, and honing my palate to determine over/under-extraction. Barbacking - stocking front of house barista supplies, dishes, reorganizing back of house, opening and closing duties. This job has taught me about meeting mistakes with curiosity, coming at all people with kindness and compassion, and being flexible.

As a Lead Server at Crow’s Nest, I was able to gain front of house food service experience in a fast-paced environment in one of Kalamazoo’s most famous and well-attended restaurants. This pushed me to learn how to manage many tasks at once, and keep calm in extremely chaotic circumstances sometimes. I worked a digital POS system to put in orders, opened and closed the restaurant, did side work, packaged to-go orders and served dine-in customers, served small and large tables, and problem-solved on many levels at a fast pace. We also served many vegan and gluten-free options, so I learned how to accommodate various dietary restrictions. I was also able to train other people how to be servers, which taught me a lot about effective communication and teaching from an equitable, peer-to-peer perspective, rather than creating unfair power dynamics. Together, all of us learned how to meet each other's needs and meet the customers’ needs at the same time, and work with each others’ unique strengths and weaknesses in order to be a great team.

As Floor Staff at J Bird I was able to gain customer service skills in a retail setting, have creative freedom to spearhead my own projects, and work on managing a social media presence. My duties included running the register, opening and closing on my own, maintaining the cleanliness of the store, keeping track of online orders and inventory, and making posts on Instagram. While employed at J Bird I spearheaded two independent projects: a fundraiser for Food Not Bombs Kalamazoo and Instagram sales. Both projects were my idea and I was able to build them both up to fruition. The first involved coordinating with the organization, designing a poster, social media promotion, communicating with customers, and managing funds raised. Instagram sales was a new feature of J Bird that allowed customers to shop on Instagram. This involved styling outfits, modelling clothes, posting on social media, and keeping track of responses and packaging orders.

As a Play & Learning Facilitator, my main task was to facilitate an inclusive, welcoming space for all kinds of young people and parents and caregivers to have fun and educational experiences together. My team and I practiced inclusive physical and verbal cues in order to let all visitors know that we were welcoming and knowledgeable about the museum and its values. We facilitated age-appropriate activities for school groups and families, attended daily opening and closing staff meetings, and worked with administrative staff to brainstorm future programming to go in addition with the museum’s consistent exhibits.

Organizing and coordinating a student group centered around reproductive rights, health, and justice on Kalamazoo College's campus. This position involves meeting planning and facilitation, project management, and volunteer service coordination. Our group has worked on events such as Period Product Drives for the YWCA in Kalamazoo, a Sex Education Conference, reproductive justice movie screenings, and our members have volunteered at Planned Parenthood and the YWCA in Kalamazoo.

As the Assistant Events Coordinator at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, I get a behind the scenes look at social justice event coordination and community organizing. My responsibilities are varied, and include maintaining the office space, sharing and explaining the space to the community, facilitating large-scale, social justice-related events, keeping track of event evaluations, and maintaining an upbeat, welcoming, positive environment. I also have the chance to access leadership-building opportunities in the community and use these opportunities to create my own programming for the campus and larger community. I have also had the responsibility of inputting Alternative Text into the Arcus Center's Praxis page in order to make our media more accessible to people who use screen readers.

As a Garden Chef, my responsibilities included providing customer service at a fast casual salad restaurant, running a register, and opening and closing the restaurant. This also involved prepping drinks and food, cleaning tables, and keeping the restaurant clean for customers who decide to eat in house. I also did back-of-house maintenance, which involved cleaning and doing dishes. Mostly, I learned to keep up a positive attitude even in a chaotic environment.

As a member of the Floor Staff, my primary duty was customer service, making sure all customers felt welcomed, and creating a positive environment. I was also tasked with making sure the store stayed organized, aesthetically pleasing, and efficient at all times. I staffed the dressing rooms, made sure all clothes that were tried on, and all clothes that were bought in, made it onto the floor in a timely fashion. I worked the register, and had to use problem-solving skills when unexpected situations came up. It was a very busy, sometimes chaotic environment, and I had to maintain a positive attitude no matter what.

As an Intern at the Center for Women's Leadership, I learned a lot about networking, large-scale event planning, and running a non-profit. A lot of the work I did in the office was online - I was tasked with converting documents onto online databases, drafting social media posts, writing thank-you cards to donors, and sending e-mails in regards to future events and fundraisers. I got a behind-the-scenes look into planning fundraisers, and planning Leadership Summits for young women, and was able to be at the table for key decision making meetings in regards to these events. I had the opportunity to meet with women who worked in local government, and meet many women in leadership positions around Oregon, from the business world to the non-profit world.