Making a Difference at Ivy Summit

The Ivy Summit was a valuable experience because it provided the opportunity for empowered students from Ivy League institutions along with Stanford and MIT to meet and share their ideas for change and partner together. The conference instilled the message in each attendee that we can make a difference today and that the world needs us to put an effort into changing the systems that aren’t working. The panels and sessions I attended varied from advice on how to bring my ideas to fruition, how to make policy useful by thinking of who it is impacting and taking my irrelevant experiences out of the equation, the responsibility of being resilient that is accepted in positions of leadership, to how to fail forwards. The speakers I had the pleasure of listening to and interacting with included the CEO of Business Insider, the CEO of Teach for America, and the Ambassador for initiatives of Asian American and Pacific Islanders, but also fellow undergraduate students who had ideas ranging from how to educate women in Afghanistan who cannot leave their houses to attend school to how to bring a greater variety of language courses to their own institution.

The conference provided me with the opportunity to reflect on my time at Dartmouth so far and determine what I can do in my life to make a difference now. I came out of the conference with a list of ideas to bring back to campus and to the organizations I am involved with, along with many new contacts to touch base with for support and advice. I found that attending smaller workshops with students who share the same passion for education as a powerful source for global change allowed me to connect with them and discuss situations around the world in greater detail. In the final workshop I attended, I met a woman who is currently working on writing the United Nation’s "Next Global Agenda" and I am now able to apply to potentially work on this project with her. I am grateful for the opportunities and connections this conference provided me with and the greater empowerment that this conference sparked. My favorite piece of advice from the conference was shared by Zhan Okuda-Lim in one of the education panels I attended. He said that when interacting with others it is important to remember that we have two ears and only one mouth for a reason. To better understand situations, we should listen twice as much as we speak.

- Submitted by Andrea Sedlacek '20, Rockefeller Mini-Grant Recipient 

The Rockefeller Center's Mini-Grants program funds registration fees for students attending conferences, as well as the costs of bringing guest speakers to Dartmouth. The views and opinions expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Rockefeller Center or constitute an endorsement by the Center.