Amanda Sherman | DECEMBER NEWSLETTER
a truly remarkable end to the year
👋 Hello! My name is Amanda Sherman!
(One gorgeous headshot if I do say so myself 😍)
I'm a 16 year old trailblazer who is experienced in UI/UX, graphic design, website building, and public speaking. Currently, I'm an innovator at The Knowledge Society, where I'm learning about emerging technology, mindsets, and more.
TL;DR: I consulted for a billion dollar company, attended a fireside chat with an MIT backed startup, and hosted workshops to bridge the gender gap in STEM!
👉 WHOOP Consultation
For the past 2 months or so, I've had the opportunity to work with WHOOP to come up with a way to increase user engagement on their app. WHOOP is a fitness tracking company that sells wearables. They recently acquired $100 million in a Series E financing round (making them now worth $1.2 billion! 🤯).
My team and I came up with the idea of adding a gamification system to the app so that users will be incentivized to work out on a regular basis. We also added partnerships so that individuals would receive real life rewards in companies such as Calm and Adidas, as well as actual merch from WHOOP, for achieving a certain number of workouts. This would help to build a community of people who are striving towards a mutual goal, all while increasing the company’s annual revenue.
HUGE shoutout to my team - Riya Palanki, Lani Wang, and Ellie Pohlig - for the chance to collaborate with y’all! 😁
🤖 Ori Fireside Chat
Recently, I was invited to attend a fire side chat with Ivan, head of product and co-founder of Ori. Ori is a robotics furniture company founded at MIT Media Lab and has since raised $26M from Khosla Ventures, Google Sidewalk Labs and more. It’s been featured in the New York Times as well! 🤩
In preparation for this talk, I created an article about how Ori is revolutionizing how we perceive living spaces with its emphasis on smart components to create a truly flexible space.
👑 CBDX Design Challenge
COVID has exacerbated the divide between the rich and the poor in a really tragic way that has hurt millions of people. Adding to the pandemic and economic inequality is the damage we are doing to our planet. Luckily, design can help. Recently, my team and I competed in the CBDX Design Challenge, a competition to create the best design solution to these three problems combined. Set in the heart of New Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world, is our moss filtration system based off of the natural process of phytoremediation. Essentially, the moss is able to absorb toxic pollutants from the air and convert it into clean air, which is released for people to breathe safely. Below is our video pitch. There’s more about it on our one pager!
Shoutout to Simone Lilavois, Angelina Lim, Linda Wei, and Fatimah Hussain for being such amazing teammates! We rocked this. 🔥
🌱 Mindsets
This month has been absolutely full of Zoom meetings. As such, exhaustion and burnouts have frequently consumed me. But there’s a solution to this issue that so many of us are suffering from!
TA DA…taking walks. You can travel to a local state park or even jog around your own neighborhood. Best part is to clear your mind and breath in the crisp, clean air…all while listening to a nice episode of The Knowledge Project.
💜 Bridging the Gender Gap in STEM
As an Operations Team Member at Reinvented Magazine, I help to coordinate different events and directly engage with logistics, all while contributing to the NPO’s mission of bridging the gender gap in STEM. This month, we held a workshop on Applications with Linux in Robotics in our biweekly workshop series, Invent with Reinvented! All turned out super successful - can’t wait for the one on astronomy that we’re holding this Sunday! 💕
🤯 #BOSSMENTALITY
To all of the students who are viewing this, I founded a startup called FuseBloom, a free online platform for high schoolers that will custom curate internship and summer opportunities. If you'd be interested in subscribing to our biweekly newsletter, you can do so here. Our beta version is set to be completed by the end of 2020 and you can pre-register here to get notified when it's ready. Get hyped!
Some wild transitions have happened at FuseBloom over the course of the past month, but we’re working hard to push through. I’ve had to push through and be a real #boss as assignments and time conflicts have battled with commitment to my startup. However, our site is up and now I’m building the user portal. In November, I even spoke about advancing educational equality through FuseBloom at the Homegirl Fellowship Call!
(Looking at the camera is a real struggle LOL 🤣)
🔥 Thank You
Hope you enjoyed reading my December newsletter! Feel free to drop feedback by emailing me or through my LinkedIn. Don't be a stranger :)
That’s it, folks! Hope to see you in the next issue 🥰
Love that and the person who wrote it even more!👌👌🥰