Event time and place: Reservoir Center for Water Solutions, 9/20/2024, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
I had the opportunity to travel to Washington DC to the Reservoir Center for Water Solutions to hear the Careers for Change: Storytellers presentation. At this event, we heard from keynote speaker Travis Loop, who started multimedia company Waterloo, as well as 10 different people who work in the water field. The organizer for this event was the Reservoir Center, but it was largely sponsored by Xylem. Some of the people heard from included photographers, journalists, and communications specialists, and they provided insight into how they ended up in the job they're in today.
The main points of this talk were about storytelling, and how telling stories can affect people more than actual actions. For example, the keynote speaker, Travis Loop, told his story of how he started as a speech writer for the governor of Hawaii, and ended up in the water field. Similarly, a lot of the other speakers didn't originally start out in the field of water, and most didn't even know who they wanted to do after they graduated. I definitely agree that telling stories is extremely affective, and speaking with the 10 guests afterwards really reinforced that idea by the stories they shared. One moment that I will always remember from this event was talking to Travis, the main speaker, 1 on 1. After the talk, I struck up a conversation with him and turns out we are from similar areas, and he had a similar start to his academic/professional career. It was encouraging to learn that someone like him ended up in a field he is very happy with.
