One of the biggest highlights of my Princeton experience has been meeting and collaborating with Evelyn Howe '25. We met my sophomore year on the Civic Leadership Council for the Pace Center for Civic Engagement. We quickly bonded over our love of the club's focus on using design thinking principles to create sustainable and responsible social impact projects in the local Princeton community. We focused on Health and Hunger & Homelessness projects.
We both have high energy levels and quickly asked each other to get lunch in Whitman dining hall. On just our second lunch, Evey told me about her idea of exploring impact-oriented career paths through a broader channel such as a podcast. She thought I would be the perfect co-host to build this project together from the ground up. Fast forward to today, together we have built and are celebrating two years of our work on The Impact Agenda podcast! Princeton has been instrumental in it all, from finding mentors, financial support, and most importantly access to the incredibly welcoming Princeton alumni network, many of whom have been our most fantastic guests.
Kicking off the initial planning in February 2022 wasn't easy. We were both brand new to the podcast space and had to learn how to do everything from crafting a unique podcast mission statement, learning how to define and find target guests, figuring out the best podcast recording and editing platforms, and so much more. We had to scrap our first few episodes and start fresh because we realized we needed to invest significantly more time in building relationships with our guests before the official recording to obtain the highest quality episodes.
We gained our footing with Season 2 and are thrilled to have just released Season 3 on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. We have built an incredible team containing two additional Princeton friends, Kendall Jeong '25 and Christina Wu '26, who spearhead our design and marketing efforts.
Evey and I agree that the best part of this project is learning how to build something new from scratch and engaging in conversation with the most innovative impact leaders globally across all disciplines. We're super grateful to the Princeton community for bringing us together, helping us develop our team, and creating the environment for our success. Evey and I have become lifelong friends - I was able to travel to Hong Kong for 10 days over winter break to enjoy Evey's hometown (and of course meet with potential podcast guests, such as a Hong Kong Olympic swimmer focused on mental health initiatives in HK). We can't wait to see where our podcast goes!