Last month I started working for the website Inventing Heron. I interview folks about what they do for a job, how they got there and how it's a part of who they are outside of the office.
The first set of interviews I did was with a number of people working in different trades at the site of the new Brown Engineer building in Providence including Alexis who is a
carpenter. Alexis, CarpenterI jumped right in with the Inventing Heron team, learning about fields I knew nothing about, keeping in mind what curiosities someone outside the job might have when reading a profile about this person and their job.
A bit more about Inventing Heron from the website:
Inventing Heron is a community of people sharing stories about work so young people, herons, can learn about different careers firsthand. It was created with the belief that storytelling is essential in the search for truth and humanity. So far, over 500 people have shared their stories on the site, ranging from mushroom farmers to astrophysicists. Inventing Heron was founded in 2013 by Lindsay Kuhn, PhD student in materials science at Brown University, to encourage young people, especially women, to go into STEM, and to celebrate the everyday, hardworking person. From there a team comprised of mostly graduate students at Brown helped it materialize and grow.
Sophie, Senior Communications Manager
So far some of the folks I've interviewed include Dana about her work as a blogger for Mombian, Aaron about teaching liberal arts classes at Julliard, Jen about working as an applications analyst with the health services program EPIC, Sophie about her work as a communications manger with Jobs for for the Future, and Camille who does many things including being a digital strategist, art historian and black history historian.
I look forward to continuing to interviewing people I know doing fantastic work in a broad range of fields and meeting new people doing jobs I know nothing about! So often when we meet people we ask them, "so, what do you do?" and interviewing people for Inventing Heron has been an exciting way to ask that question in a more wholistic way.
Jen, Applications Analyst