Continuing the tradition, my December post will summarize this past year and review the goals I set at the beginning of the year.
2023 was a great year – My partner and I finally booked our wedding venue and will be getting married next year! I celebrated 2 years at my now not-so-new company and I even received an award from our local Business Journal.
Photo of all the Women of Influence award recipients at the Philadelphia Business Journal event
In terms of my 2023 goals, here is how they went:
1) Grow our Online STEM Community
I successfully completed a subgoal here of booking at least 5 speaking engagements in 2023. I first spoke at ASCE’s Eastern Multiregional Leadership Conference to about 50 people. Then spoke at two separate SWE Conferences in Detroit and Los Angeles respectively. For my 4th speaking engagement, I was a speaker at NSPE’s Annual Conference – NSPECon. My last main speaking event this past year was the STEM is the Way Virtual Summit where I spoke about my STEM Outreach experience. I did not reach my other subgoal goal of 1,000 followers on TikTok, but hope to carry this goal over to 2024 to then be able to host lives with you all on there as I only need about 200 more followers. The online STEM community is awesome, and I hope to plan more collaborations with you all throughout next year.
2) Focus on Wedding Planning
This goal went well in 2023. We booked our venue earlier this year and are slowly booking our vendors. The vendors we have already booked include our wedding cake baker, DJ/emcee, photographer, videographer, and even a content creator. I did already ask everyone in my bridal party, and it will be 5 people on my side – my maid of honor, three of my close friends, and my little brother. We even have ordered all the dresses except one. I said “Yes” to my dress in October from a local Wedding consignment shop. We still have a lot to do, but I am excited for the wedding. We also welcome any advice you have about wedding planning, so please leave a comment below or email me with any advice.
3) Post Monthly Blog Posts and Sustainable Swaps
I completed this 2023 goal by posting both a blog post and a sustainable swap each month. I attended several conferences this year and always get questions from folks on how I pay for the parts that work isn’t reimbursing me for. Because of this, I focused many of my blog posts this year on this topic as well as breaking down my personal costs at each of these conferences to hopefully help folks attend more conferences in the future.
Below are the blog posts that I authored and posted this past year:
I loved all these topics, but I especially enjoyed writing the ones about personal finance as I wish I learned about things like credit scores and High Yield Savings Accounts earlier than I did. I have loved sharing with you all that I have learned along my journey and am excited to continue this! I have a few ideas already for next year, but I would love to hear from you if there is any topic you would like me to cover.
4) Complete a Life Audit
This goal I didn’t do so well with. I did automate some things in my life, like tracking that it takes an average of 87 days for Nemo to finish his bag of dog food, so I have set up an Auto-Ship order with Chewy so that I never have to worry “Did I order dog food?” again. I am still struggling with the organizational part of this goal, especially when it comes to mail and I never did set up a personal fitness goal.
We did do some smaller things to help make our lives a bit easier! We also established a small bookcase for items that don’t have an established place yet or it is my partner’s and I don’t know where it goes. In terms of important, but not urgent tasks, we did hang an erasable board in our main room where we write these tasks, so they do not get forgotten. We have also been using Alexa (through our Echo Dot) to set timers of when we need to leave for an event or to remind us to switch over the laundry.
In terms of financial subgoals, I did complete these as I did max out my retirement investments for 2023 ($22,500 for 401k and $6,500 for Roth IRA this year). I also transferred over my ESOP from my old job into my IRA.
5) Visit 5 New States
I did complete this goal as I traveled to Arizona to go snowboarding with a friend from high school who will also be a bridesmaid in my wedding. I also then traveled to both Michigan and Kentucky to present at SWE and NSPE conferences, respectively. As mentioned in January’s goal blog post, my partner and I did a road trip to the New England area and visited both Maine and Rhode Island during that trip. Completing this short-term goal will help me with my long-term goal of visiting all 50 states by 50.
There are many things that I accomplished this year both small and large:
- Speaking at the National Society of Professional Engineer’s (NSPE) Annual Conference during my first full year as a PE!
- Renewed my ENV SP certification
- Nominated for Nano-Influencer of the Year by Philadelphia Magazine
- Dedicating over 60 hours to student outreach impact, mainly in a virtual setting, and reaching over 1400 students through my efforts in 2023!
Here is to celebrating accomplishments (no matter how small) and to a great 2024!
STEM Changemaker 