Meeting My Mentor

I met my mentor, Lisa, for the first time on Tuesday, January 22nd, from 4:30 to 5:30pm. Lisa's a sharp and straightforward person, and I think we're going to get along pretty well. She's a project manager for Gallagher Design, a firm which designs and creates exhibits for museums across the world. We met for coffee to discuss my possible internship, which proved to be much less formal and terrifying as I'd thought beforehand. Once she'd familiarized me with her background and goals, we walked back to her office, where I met the rest of her staff (who are all friendly and fairly young) and got to experience the environment she works in.

We went over what my project entails, projects she would like me to help her with, and resources she has which are going to be very helpful to me in my essay as well as my physical project. I'm going to be helping Lisa and her team organize their material storage, upgrade their products to be more eco-friendly, and teaching them whatever else I learn about ways they can become more environmentally-conscious as a company. Lisa is taking a class at UC Berkeley called "Pracical Applications of Sustainable Design", and she gave me her entire class syllabus which is full of resources that will give me a better sense of "green" design and probably some sources that I will be able to use in my research paper.

I have three tasks to accomplish by the end of my next meeting with her, which appears to be this coming Wednesdsay: organize the sources in the syllabus (on Excel, probably), visit GreenDepot to collect information about sustainable building materials (and paint samples), and start sorting their materials closet ("green" versus "not green" supplies). I'm looking forward to meeting with her again- their office, though on the small side, has a good, artsy vibe to it, and it's not in a bad part of town (right near AT&T Park). On top of that, Lisa is determined to help me with my project and keeps steering me in the right direction.